Edwards keeps on truckin'

2003 Rookie of the Year wins crash-filled Florida Dodge Dealers 250

Carl Edwards celebrates his victory with a backflip before heading to the winners circle. AP

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) -- Carl Edwards jumped out of his truck, swung his fist through the air and landed a backflip at the finish line. He then fell to his knees and pounded the grass.

It was the biggest victory of his young career. Not even a warning from NASCAR could ruin this celebration.

Edwards won the crash-filled Florida Dodge Dealers 250 on Friday night at Daytona International Speedway, his fourth victory in two years on the NASCAR Craftsman Truck series.

He held off defending series champion Travis Kvapil by 0.141 seconds. Edwards then stopped his truck in front of the main grandstand, waved his arms to pump up the big crowd and did his trademark stunt on the edge of the track.

That was his way of getting around NASCAR, which had warned him not to do the flip off the bed of his truck.

"That was all I could come up with," he said. "I hope it was all right."

Edwards, who finished eighth in points and earned Rookie of the Year honors last season, took the lead after the final restart with 12 laps to go.

The 24-year-old Roush Racing driver spoiled the debut of Toyota, the first foreign manufacturer to compete in any of the top three NASCAR series.

Kvapil passed Mike Wallace just before the finish line.

"To come out of the box running this strong, and know we're only going to get better, is pretty exciting," said Kvapil, one of two Toyota drivers in the top 10.

Edwards led the final 21 laps. His victory may have been saved much earlier in the race when he avoided a crash by turning down pit road.

It was one of many wrecks in the first night race in the truck series.

An accident on lap 51 involved nearly half the 36-truck field. It started when Tracy Hines hit Jack Sprague from behind, sending Sprague spinning up the track and collecting several others in the melee. When the smoke cleared, 15 trucks were damaged -- many for the duration of the 100-lap race.

Two trucks were so badly damaged they drove backward down pit road to get to their crews. No one was seriously injured.

"I saw a lot of things [Friday night] I wish I hadn't seen," Ted Musgrave said. "I guess Friday the 13th brought out all the idiots. I've never seen anybody drive like this before. It's a fun race and a neat deal, but there are a lot of people out there without much experience in the draft and they're learning it the hard way."

Eighteen trucks remained on the lead lap when the race restarted with 39 laps to go.

The race had four accidents in the first 40 laps, two of them involving former NASCAR Winston Cup driver Steve Park.

Park bounced off the side of David Ruetimann's Toyota and into Wallace's Chevrolet. David Starr also got caught up in it. Park later lost control of his truck on the backstretch and slammed into Matt Crafton.

"I was just trying to keep my nose clean," said Park, fired last year in his sixth season with Dale Earnhardt Inc. "We had a good race car."

NASCAR Nextel Cup driver Kevin Harvick, owner of Crafton's truck, had a different view.

"We've got the same truck wrecking out there all the time," Harvick said.

Toyota's showing may have been a sign of things to come. Most inside racing circles feel the Japanese automaker will infiltrate NASCAR's biggest series, the Nextel Cup, in the next few years.

Toyota, which had success in a brief run in NASCAR's now-defunct Goody's Dash car series, has put together a four-team, seven-truck fleet of Tundras to compete against the established trucks of Chevrolet, Dodge and Ford.