It was a hot and humid night at Hampton, Georgia Saturday night as the NASCAR Nationwide Series stars invaded The Atlanta Motor Speedway for the Great Clips 300. Continuing his hot streak, Carl Edwards claimed his sixth Nationwide Series win in the 2011 season and the tenth win for the 2011 Ford Mustang.

[media-credit name=”Joe Dunn” align=”alignright” width=”263″][/media-credit]Leading 101 of 195 laps, the closest competitor to Edwards was, to no one’s surprise Kyle Busch who led only 31 laps but managed to finish second., followed by Edward’s teammate Ricky Stenhouse Jr. in third. Kevin Harvick finished fourth followed by Kasey Kahne. Justin Allgaier was sixth, with Brad Keselowski, Aric Almirola, Jason Leffler and Elliott Sadler rounding out the top ten.

As usual, half of the top ten finishers were Cup drivers and not eligible for the Series points. However, the points leader, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. was the top Series finisher and maintained the points lead, extending his lead over Sadler by 8 points. Two regulars, Reed Sorenson and Trevor Bayne ran consistently up front until a lap 170 incident in turn two, that also involved Sorenson’s teammate Justin Allgaier ended both of their nights. Both driver’s expressed frustration with the incident.

This was also a good night of racing for some of the struggling teams and driver’s in the series. Matt Carter, son of former Cup team owner Travis Carter, landed a one time ride that was scheduled to run the entire race, as opposed to the ‘start & park’ rides that he has settled for all season. The folks from Bennett Buildings and Carports USA gave Carter a chance in the #39 Ford. Carter showed a lot of promise as he kept the car intact and clean, finishing a respectable 17th two laps down, with all the fenders where they belonged.

The series senior driver, Morgan Shepherd brought his #89 car home with a top 25 finish, and Jennifer Jo Cobb, another owner diver with very limited funding, again was on the track for the checkered flag, with a top 30 finish. It should be noted that Cobb also had a top 25 run the previous night in her NASCAR Camping World Truck Series entry.

With about 20 laps to go Carl Edwards made the pass for the lead by getting past Kevin Harvick but Ricky Stenhouse Jr. was coming up from behind at the same time making it to fourth by the time his Roush-Fenway team mate was in the lead. Stenhouse closed in a little but could never make it by him.  With less than ten laps remaining Stenhouse was challenged by Kyle Busch for second and got by Stenhouse as Edwards checked out.

Edwards led 101 of the 195 laps on the steamy Atlanta night. It was his sixth Nationwide Series win of 2011. It almost wasn’t to be as Edwards was penalized for taking equipment out of the pit stall when he left with the air gun and hose. However, Edwards was fast and charged to the front.

Edwards said in victory lane, It was a big week for Fastenal with the announcement we made.” He also psoke about a visit to a cancer camp,  “I was inspired by going to the Aflac cancer camp, he said. He then mentioned the racing,  “I’ve got a great team. We raced as hard as we could. It was a blast. We raced hard and we raced clean. I raced with Kyle (Busch), and Kevin (Harvick) and Kasey (Kahne) and it was all good racing.”

Second place finisher Kyle Busch said, “We had a good car, just not good enough. Busch then spoke about their engine package saying,  Hated it that we didn’t have enough under the hood for those Fords.”

The final restart was caused by the wreck that involved team mates Just Allgaier and Reed Sorenson that saw Sorenson get clipped in the left rear by the hard charging Allgaier sending Sorenson up into the side of Daytona 500 winner Trevor Bayne who was in the  back due to a pit stop after challenging for the win.

Sorenson made it a point to say that he would find Allgaier after the race. Sorenson said, “It’s kind of uncalled for to wreck your teammate. I will find him after the race. It will be between me and him.”  He was clearly upset.  “I feel horrible, you don’t ever want to crash anyone, especially your team mate”, Allgaier said after the race, “No words can describe it, I want to talk to Reed, it was my fault. Took points way from them they didn’t deserve.”

Ricky Stenhouse finished third followed by Kevin Harvick and Kasey Kahne. There were eight different leaders and six caution periods for 27 laps. The margin of victory was just under.7 of a second.

[media-credit name=”Joe Dunn” align=”alignright” width=”220″][/media-credit]