Print      
With a push, Edwards streaks to NHMS pole With a push, Edwards streaks to pole
Carl Edwards celebrates winning the pole position for Sunday’s NASCAR Sprint Cup race with his Toyota teammates. (Jonathan Ferrey/Getty Images)
By Julian Benbow
Globe Staff

LOUDON, N.H. — A day after settling for a 15th-place finish at Chicagoland Speedway, Carl Edwards was still simmering.

It wasn’t the way anyone on Edwards’s Comcast Business Toyota team expected the opener of the Sprint Cup Chase to go.

It wasn’t the type of finish he expected after qualifying fifth and suddenly there was slightly more pressure on him coming into the Bad Boy Off Road 300 in Loudon this weekend.

Normally, a bad run will linger with Edwards for three or four days. But when Edwards got to the shop this week and saw his crew chief Dave Rogers already had shaken it off, he figured he should do the same.

“Dave was over that pretty quickly,’’ Edwards said. “He was focused really hard here on this race.’’

Rogers had his reasons.

As a Vermont native, New Hampshire Motor Speedway was essentially Rogers’s home track growing up. On the first stop in Loudon in July, Rogers dropped Edwards a few not-so-subtle hints about taking the checkered flag at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. As Edwards and his team prepare for Sunday’s race, Rogers’s family is close by, including his father, Dave Sr.

“He hasn’t talked about it a lot, but he said one time, ‘I just want you to know this is really important to me and do whatever you can.’

“He’s told me how important this race is to him. I’d really like to see him in victory lane. That would be really cool.’’

So far, Edwards is doing his part. His lap of 28.119 seconds, 135.453 miles per hour edged Martin Truex Jr. to put Edwards on the pole for the sixth time this season. It is the 22d pole in Edwards’s career and his third at NHMS.

Edwards’s No. 19 Toyota has been one of the strongest throughout the season, and he gave the credit to Rogers for persistently pushing to get the most out of the car.

“Dave’s not scared of anything. He literally comes to the race track ready to go. I’ve never seen him go, ‘Eh, we probably should be conservative here,’ ’’ Edwards said. “I mean, he’ll make any adjustment at any time. If he thinks it’s faster, he’ll do it and that’s hard to do when you’ve got a pretty fast car, is start adjusting it. So I think Dave’s really probably the biggest reason.’’

Even though Edwards is sitting comfortably in ninth in points, he said he’ll still be aggressive.

“Not a lot actually translates from qualifying to the race except that confidence to know that everybody came here, 40 guys, and our car was really fast,’’ Edwards said. “That’s nice. It’s nice to know that we’ve got enough horsepower and we’ve got enough downforce and we’ve figured out some setup that can run that fast lap. So that confidence, I think, is the big thing. Now we’ll go into practice a little looser [Saturday], be able to work on the car and really expect it to be the fastest car.’’

Edwards will have to hold off Truex, who posted his 19th top-10 start this season after winning at Chicagoland last week and advancing to the second round of the Chase.

It was his second win in three weeks and his third straight top-five finish. He won in Darlington, finished third in Richmond, and took the momentum with him into the start of the Chase.

“I’ve got a lot of motivation here at New Hampshire especially because of being close and not getting a win here yet and I really want it,’’ Truex said. “So we don’t have to worry about letting off.’’

The two drivers behind Truex in points, Brad Keselowski and Kyle Busch will start on the same row, in 11th and 12th. On the fringes, Chris Buescher, sitting 16th, will start on Row 14 in 28th.

A practice-round wreck forced Austin Dillon to move ­into a backup car and pushed him back to 32 to start on Sunday.

In 24 starts at Loudon, Edwards has three top-fives and seven top-10s, but he’s still looking for his first NHMS win.

“Yeah, we hope we’re in victory lane here, but I know what will happen if we have a bad race on Sunday,’’ Edwards said. “Dave will be just be ready to go win at Dover and that’s what we’ve got to do. Hopefully we can just get the victory here and move on, but we will not quit. This team’s pretty spectacular.’’

Julian Benbow can be reached at jbenbow@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @julianbenbow.