Edwards, Busch use weekend off to keep on racing

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Carl Edwards capped his win at Montreal with a signature flip. Elsa/Getty Images Sport

MOORESVILLE, N.C. -- Weekend off?

"Who needs it?" asked Kyle Busch.

Well, maybe a lot of people, considering it was perhaps the last chance to recharge before the final two-race push to the Chase.

Just 89 points separate seventh-place Ryan Newman from 14th-place Brian Vickers when the series resumes at Atlanta Motor Speedway for the Labor Day Weekend race. Kyle Busch is just 34 points behind Matt Kenseth for the 12th and final Chase position.

Busch never takes a weekend off, however. He won Friday night's inaugural NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race at Chicagoland Speedway, then flew north of the border to race in Sunday's rain-soaked Nationwide Series contest in Montreal, finishing 10th.

Some believe that Busch has diluted his Cup effort by running in NASCAR's two other divisions; that it is a main reason he is outside the top 12 with two races remaining. But Busch would rather spend his off weekends in a truck or Nationwide race than have a weekend off. Besides, he walked away with a trophy Friday night in Joliet, Ill., taking a truck that had a tendency to bottom out on the track and finding a way to get it to the front of the field.

Busch had to battle NCWTS regular Todd Bodine for the victory in a "green-, white-, checkered-flag finish."

"I just had to make sure that I got a good restart when I got a good run on [Bodine] down on the bottom-side -- I just had to stay there," Busch said. "I just had to keep going. Even if he pinched me into turn three, I was going to have to keep my nose in there because that was the only position I had on him -- I had to keep my position."

Busch then hopped on a plane and, after clearing customs, headed to Circuit de Gilles Villeneuve for the Nationwide Series race. Saturday's qualifications were held in steady rain, and Sunday's race began under dry conditions before more rain soaked the track, forcing Nationwide teams to switch to rain tires -- something highly unusual in NASCAR but the second year in a row it has been done at Montreal. (Rain tires are currently not used in Sprint Cup.)

Busch was running fourth when he got spun near the end of the race, he but was still able to finish in the top 10.

"That was a really tough way to end a long, long day," said Busch, who had to check up negotiating turn two to avoid Carl Edwards and Andrew Ranger, who were tangling in front of him. "We got banged around a good bit out there today, but still we were looking like we had a shot at winning this thing at the end -- at least a top-five...It's disappointing, to say the least."

Edwards beat Marcos Ambrose by 0.393 seconds to win the NAPA Auto Parts 200 and score the 23rd victory of his Nationwide Series career, his third of the season and his first at Montreal. He did it with a dramatic last-lap pass of Ambrose, who otherwise dominated the race by leading 60 of 76 laps.

"I just made a mistake at the end there and lost the race," Ambrose said. "Any other lap, any other corner, I would have got it straight back. It just happened to be the last corner of the race. We had a drag race coming off the hairpin. Carl got position on me, and I had to try to make sure I [outbraked] him. I feel pretty devastated, because I let my boys down. We came here to win, and anything less than that was a disappointment."

Meanwhile, Edwards got to do his first back-flip on international soil after winning the race.

Both Busch and Edwards may be better served by concentrating on Sprint Cup instead of Nationwide and NCWTS, but these are two true racers who enjoy on-track battles as much as anyone else. And no one can deny their work ethic as they would rather be on the job than taking a rare weekend off.