Carl Edwards won the 2011 Sprint All-Star Race at Charlotte Motor Speedway after finishing 0.443 seconds ahead of runner-up Kyle Busch and collected a whole million dollar prize for his victory. Moreover, Edwards became the eighth different winner of the event in the past eight years. David Reutimann ran third, followed by Tony Stewart, Greg Biffle, Matt Kenseth, Denny Hamlin, David Ragan, Kevin Harvick and Ryan Newman completed the top 10 but only Edwards became millionaire after the event.
When NASCAR officials called the scheduled caution after 90 laps, signaling a 10-minute break before the final 10-lap dash, Edwards had already cleared Busch for the lead in Turn 3 on Lap 86 and hold the top spot for the last segment of the race while Busch, Biffle, Stewart and Hamlin were also chasing the million dollar prize.
However, Edwards victory was the result of a flawless work during the mandatory 4-tyre pit stops before the final 10-lap shootout.
Carl Edwards commented about his achievement:
"The key to winning this race are the guys behind me. [Crew chief] Bob Osborne and my guys -- especially the guys on pit road -- they could have dropped the ball. That's all the pressure in the world on those guys.
They performed a flawless pit stop, and we got out in front of Kyle. He is a bear on those restarts, and if we had started behind him, I think it would have been really tough. It's unbelievable. I feel so bad about tearing up the car, but Bob says he has a faster one for next week [for the Coca-Cola 600], so I'm pretty excited."
The only thing that went wrong during the All-Star race was Edwards' slide through the frontstretch grass while he has been celebrating his victory. Edwards hit the infield sod and destroyed the front end of his No. 99 Ford. Although he thought he hit a drain, track officials denied his claim, by saying there was nothing but grass there.
Edwards continued:
"I had no idea that drain was there. I guess NASCAR's mad, because they think we're hiding something with that car."
When told there was no drain cover Edwards explained with huge surprise:
"Really? Wow, so it just dug in the splitter and I didn’t expect that. Bob has been doing a really good job of keeping the splitter down. It helps on the race track and it doesn’t help in the grass."#
Busch, who had fallen out of four of five previous All-Star Races, was happy to finish and conceded that he was just beaten by a faster car.
"A few more laps and maybe I would have got him, but all we had was 10 [in the final segment]. He was just so good through the corner. Once he got his car turned, he didn't even have to finish turning his car. It would kind of turn, and he would hammer the throttle, and it would just continue to turn and just drive up off the corner. ... Tonight we just flat got beat."
