Edwards earns pivotal starting spot at Indianapolis

Foyt, one more than Rick Mears, one more than Al Unser and four more than Mario Andretti. “That’s pretty remarkable. For me to just be looking for one, it’s a little disappointing that I’ve been around this long and haven’t won those races”.

The No. 18 Toyota driver has won the past two NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races and three of the last four.

Just two days, before he had been paraded through downtown Pittsboro, Ind. – his adopted hometown after his family relocated from California so he could pursue his racing dreams – to the cheers of nearly all of the village’s 4,000 residents. This is the one on his bucket list that he hasn’t gotten yet, and we talk about it a lot.

The crowd roared when Indiana native Tony Stewart posted the fastest lap in the first round of qualifying Saturday at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Despite rolling off fifth, Edwards laid down a lap of 183.364 miles per hour (49.056-seconds), a time which stood up as seven drivers attempted – but failed to – bump him from the top spot.

Gordon is in his final season of Cup competition, driving the No. 24 Chevrolet for Hendrick Motorsports.

“I never would have guessed it”, Busch said. And I don’t even feel like I can get a draft. “Since 2008, our numbers have been smaller every year and this year, for the first time since 2008, we’ve seen a turnaround in numbers”, Boles said. “So, it makes you have a lot of second thoughts about how aggressive to be to get the vehicle to turn when you know that in traffic it’s so much worse”.

Now 12th on the Chase Grid, Gordon still needs a win to automatically qualify for NASCAR’s playoffs. Starting fourth at his favorite track may be a good start.

“In sports you do see stories like this where somebody is really hurt, then to be able to come back in this amount of time, it’s a special story”, Gibbs said. The trio has combined for eight Brickyard 400 wins (Gordon, 5; Stewart, 2; Newman, 1).

For Gordon, there has been nothing in his hall of fame career that matches his five Indy wins. Here’s a look at the odds for this race.

Tony Stewart says he’d rather be struggling and race well at Indy than be racing well and struggle at the Brickyard 400. “Just because we’re qualifying further back than we want doesn’t mean that we can’t get it done”. He hasn’t performed poorly, but his 2015 campaign has been anything but memorable. His teammate Nico Rosberg will start second on Sunday with Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel third….

Sprint Cup Series driver Carl Edwards (19) celebrates with a member of his crew after winning the pole during qualifying for the NASCAR Brickyard 400 auto race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Indianapolis, Saturday, July 25, 2015. Busch broke his right leg and left foot and missed the first 11 Cup races.

“(The four hood pins) were probably hanging”, Hamlin said.

“I think that is you try to get too aggressive, you’re going to wreck”, Gordon said. “We’ve got some good performance under the hood which is definitely “big” given the high drag package”.

“There’s so many different things, it’s racing and you just have to let it play out”.