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RICHMOND, Va. — So much for team orders.
With the amount of success Joe Gibbs Racing has enjoyed this season, the recipe for an intra-team skirmish among two of the the team’s four drivers in a pressure-filled, late-race situation has been simmering. Sunday at Richmond International Raceway‘s short-track cauldron, all the ingredients came together.
Carl Edwards nudged teammate Kyle Busch out of the way during the final lap of Sunday’s Toyota Owners 400, leaving Coach Joe Gibbs to celebrate a 1-2 finish — just not in the order he might have anticipated. Though the team’s namesake wound up celebrating in Victory Lane, he first had to endure a brush with his worst nightmare — hard racing and contact between two of his cars in the closing stages that could’ve resulted in disaster.
“Kind of my fear is always at the end when you got cars as good as we have, and drivers as good as we have, that you wind up with two of your teammates battling there,” Gibbs said. “You wish it wouldn’t happen. I think Carl would say that, too.”
He did, likening the scenario to a “double-edged sword.”
“You’re left as a race car driver, what do we do here? We’re here to win the race,” Edwards said. “You can either finish first or second. It’s a tough decision. At this point in the season, we both got wins. Really it’s about just going out for trophies and having fun. We still finished first and second. Nobody got wrecked. But you can’t just sit there.
“I wouldn’t expect Kyle — if the roles were reversed, I’d expect him to bump me the same way. That’s hard racing.”
The JGR twosome savored the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series’ return to daytime racing at the .75-mile track after a 19-year absence, combining to lead the majority of the 400 laps (Edwards paced 151, Busch 78). But competing under sunshine didn’t keep them from conjuring up their own version of full-moon craziness in the final circuit.
Edwards’ No. 19 Toyota team radio crackled repeatedly with “you and him” as he and Busch separated themselves from the pack during the 37-lap green-flag stretch to the finish. But Edwards also heard encouragement — “Get him, get him! Dig!” — as the laps clicked away.
WATCH: Edwards: ‘I thought, I’m gonna give him a little nudge’
Edwards peeked inside Busch’s No. 18 through Turns 1 and 2 before falling back in line for the final charge. Midway through Turns 3 and 4, Edwards used his front bumper to push his way past for the checkered flag.
Busch’s radio largely went silent, with only one reminder during the cool-down lap: “We did everything right. Be smart.” Busch’s post-race interviews were smart, indeed, as he held his tongue to deflect any potential negatives when asked about his teammate’s move and lauded the efforts of his car, team and crew chief instead.
“Our Banfield Camry was real awesome today,” Busch said, repeating what became a familiar post-race refrain. “We had a great race car. My guys made some awesome adjustments to it. It was really good for us to have an opportunity to run and race for the win like that.”
Adam Stevens, crew chief for Busch and JGR’s No. 18, was more forthcoming, saying that lap traffic tended to race the leader slightly harder, giving Edwards an opening to gain ground. Still, Stevens said he thought Busch’s third win in four weeks was well within his grasp.
“Generally when you take the white (flag) and have a couple car-length lead, you feel pretty good about it, but they don’t always pan out that way,” Stevens said. “Joe Gibbs Racing had good cars, we had good equipment, we have good drivers. When you’re trading paint and out there leading laps, stuff like this’ll happen.”
What didn’t happen during Richmond’s first scheduled matinee since 1997 was a Joe Gibbs Racing processional, with orders from above dictating that the two teammates play nice and stay in line with a victory up for grabs. Edwards’ crew chief Dave Rogers said competing at the highest possible level is an obligation that all teams share — teammates or not.
“If we look at the big picture, today was a great day for NASCAR. Our fans don’t want to see teammate orders,” said Rogers, who is just nine races into his first season atop Edwards’ pit box. “They don’t deserve teammates to fall in line. They deserve good, hard racing. So I think today was a great day for the sport.
“It stinks that we had to move a teammate. I’m sure Adam and I will talk about it, and Carl and Kyle will talk about it. But I think it would be very disappointing to our fans if Joe imposed a team order and told us, ‘Hey, have a parade instead of a race.’ There’s going to be plenty of days that the 18 is faster than us and they’ll probably get to our back bumper and move us. We’ll go down to Victory Lane, shake their hands, tell them, ‘Good job.’ That’s just a testament to Joe Gibbs Racing, allowing us to put ourselves in that position.”
Edwards joined his teammate as a two-time winner this year in NASCAR’s premier series, but now the two must sort out Sunday’s differences as they navigate the rest of the season.
Gibbs, who won three Super Bowls in his 16-year tenure as an NFL head coach, has loads of experience in maintaining team harmony. And though he’s also in his 25th year as leader of one of NASCAR’s top organizations, Gibbs says there’s no road map for calming the waters in the JGR huddle.
“What you do is you start out and work your way through it. That’s what we’ll do,” Gibbs said. “So, you know, it’s a tough thing because it’s certainly painful for one side. You’re on such a high with the other side. It’s a tough thing. You kind of know what we’ll do is kind of go to work and work our way through it.”
