Edwards bounces back
As his interim crew chief headed toward inspection, Carl Edwards offered to lend him cash to bribe NASCAR's officials.
Of course, Edwards was joking. But in making light of the severe penalties his team drew when its race-winning car failed inspection last month, Edwards showed his Roush Fenway Racing team has solidly bounced back from the Las Vegas disaster.
Edwards raced to his series-best third win of the season Sunday, holding off Jimmie Johnson on a two-lap overtime sprint to the finish at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth.
It backed Edwards' declaration four weeks ago that his team would survive the 100-point deduction and six-race suspension to crew chief Bob Osborne that stemmed from a missing lid on the oil tank after the Vegas victory.
"It doesn't matter if we get penalized. We might get a 100-point penalty for something today," Edwards said. "It's not going to change what I do. I'm just going to do the best I can and our cars are really good. It does feel good to look in there and see the oil tank cover on the car, that's good.
"But this is what we do. We got out and try to win. The other stuff doesn't matter."
That was evident as Edwards dominated Sunday, leading a race-high 123 laps while continuing to be the driver to beat at NASCAR's intermediate tracks. He won at California and Vegas and might have won in Atlanta if his motor didn't fail while he was leading.
"He probably could have led however many laps there were today," third-place finisher Kyle Busch said. "He just didn't show his full hand. We knew he was pretty good."
IndyCar Series:As the laps wound down and his fuel ran low on the streets of St. Petersburg, Fla., teenager Graham Rahal said he had only one thought: "Please, please come to an end."
The son of longtime racing star Bobby Rahal had come oh, so close to winning his first major open-wheel race several times last year as a rookie in the Champ Car World Series only to be disappointed.
Now, in his first race in the IRL IndyCar Series, Rahal was out front but being chased by Helio Castroneves, the winner of the last two races here and a guy who has been around long enough that he raced against Graham's father, who retired in 1998.
"At the end of the race, with Helio behind me, I knew he has won a lot of races and has a lot of experience, but I knew we had the pace to beat him," Rahal said, grinning happily after enjoying a victory celebration that, of course, included no champagne for the underaged driver. "I kept telling myself that."
Rahal came back from a spinout early in the race to become the youngest winner in major open-wheel history. At 19 years, 93 days, Rahal broke the age record set two years ago in Sonoma, Calif., by another driver from a racing family, Marco Andretti, who was 19 years, 167 days old.
The win also was a crowning moment for the former Champ Car teams that only last month became part of a unified American open-wheel series under the IRL banner.
Formula One: A return to one of his favorite tracks was all Ferrari's Felipe Massa needed to find his stride again.
Massa scored his first points of the season by winning his second straight Bahrain Grand Prix in Sakhir, Bahrain, edging teammate and new overall leader Kimi Raikkonen by 3.339 seconds.