Carl Edwards wins All-Star pole at Charlotte - MotorSportsTalk

With the name of the late short track legend Dick Trickle above the door of his No. 99 Roush Fenway Racing Ford, Carl Edwards claimed the pole for tomorrow night’s NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

Edwards, who won the 2011 All-Star Race, topped the time sheets with a speed of 145.556 miles per hour and will be joined on the front row by Kurt Busch (144.068 mph) after Dale Earnhardt Jr. was knocked from P2 because of a five-second penalty for a loose lug nut.

The All-Star Race sees drivers qualify by running three laps and taking a mandatory four-tire pit stop; the driver with the lowest total time earns the pole. Adding to the uniqueness of the format is that this year, NASCAR removed all speed limits on pit road during the qualifying (they’ll be back for the race). Per USA Today’s Jeff Gluck, Edwards entered pit road off Turn 4 at 154 mph.

Greg Biffle and Kyle Busch will make up Row 2 of the All-Star Race, with Joey Logano (who had the fastest speed entering pit road at 158 mph) and Clint Bowyer in Row 3. Denny Hamlin, Mark Martin, Kasey Kahne, and Jeff Gordon rounded out the Top 10.

Martin Truex Jr. won the pole for the Sprint Showdown preliminary event, which will see the top two finishers and the winner of a fan vote advance into the All-Star Race. Among the competitors in the Showdown will be Jamie McMurray, who will start on the front row alongside Truex, and Danica Patrick, who will start seventh.

Tomorrow’s All-Star Race will be split into five segments (four 20-lap segments and a fifth and final 10-lap segment). This year, the running order at the end of Segment 4 will be repositioned based on the average finish for the first four segments directly behind the caution car before pit road opens for a mandatory four-tire stop; how the cars come out of the pits will determine the starting order of the final segment.

The race winner will win a $1 million prize from Sprint. A second $1 million bonus — dubbed “Bruton’s Big Bonus” after Charlotte Motor Speedway and Speedway Motorsports Inc. CEO Bruton Smith — is also in play if a driver can win all five segments of the event.

Media and fan attention focused on a controversial run-in between Haiden Deegan and his Monster Energy Yamaha Star Racing teammate Jordon Smith during Round 10 of the Monster Energy Supercross race at Detroit, after which the 250 East points’ Hunter Lawrence defends the young rider in the postrace news conference.

Deegan took the early lead in Heat 1 of the round, but the mood swiftly changed when he became embroiled in a spirited battle with teammate Smith.

On Lap 3, Smith caught Deegan with a fast pass through the whoops. Smith briefly held the lead heading into a bowl turn but Deegan had the inside line and threw a block pass. In the next few turns, the action heated up until Smith eventually ran into the back of Deegan’s Yamaha and crashed.

One of the highlights of the battle seemed to include a moment when Deegan waited on Smith in order to throw a second block pass, adding fuel to the controversy.

After his initial crash, Smith fell to seventh on the next lap. He would crash twice more during the event, ultimately finishing four laps off the pace in 20th.

The topic was inevitably part of the postrace news conference.

“It was good racing; it was fun,” Deegan said at about the 27-minute mark in the video above. “I just had some fun doing it.”

Smith had more trouble in the Last Chance Qualifier. He stalled his bike in heavy traffic, worked his way into a battle for fourth with the checkers in sight, but crashed a few yards shy of the finish line and was credited with seventh. Smith earned zero points and fell to sixth in the standings.

Lawrence defends Deegan — *Jordon Smith failed to make the Detroit Supercross Main and fell to sixth in the points. – Feld Motor Sports*

“I think he’s like fifth in points,” Deegan said. “He’s a little out of it. Beside that it was good, I don’t know. I wasn’t really paying attention.”

Deegan jokingly deflected an earlier question with the response that he wasn’t paying attention during the incident.

“He’s my teammate, but he’s a veteran, he’s been in this sport for a while,” Deegan said. “I was up there just battling. I want to win as much as everybody else. It doesn’t matter if it’s a heat race or a main; I just want to win. I was just trying to push that.”

As Deegan and Smith battled, Jeremy Martin took the lead. Deegan finished second in the heat and backed up his performance with a solid third-place showing in the main, which was his second podium finish in a short six-race career. Deegan’s first podium was earned at Daytona, just two rounds ago.

But as Deegan struggled to find something meaningful to say, unsurprisingly for a 17-year-old rider who was not scheduled to run the full 250 schedule this year, it was the championship leader Lawrence who came to his defense.

“I just want to point something out, which kind of amazes me,” Lawrence said during the conference. “So many of the people on social media, where everyone puts their expertise in, are saying the racing back in the ’80s, the early 90s, when me were men. They’re always talking about how gnarly it was and then anytime a block pass or something happens now, everyone cries about it.

“That’s just a little bit interesting. Pick one. You want the gnarly block passes from 10 years ago and then you get it, everyone makes a big song and dance about it.”

Pressed further, Lawrence defended not only the pass but the decision-making process that gets employed lap after lap in a Supercross race.

“It’s easy to point the finger,” Lawrence said. “We’re out there making decisions in a split millisecond. People have all month to pay their phone bill and they still can’t do that on time.

“We’re making decisions at such a fast reaction [time with] adrenaline. … I’m not just saying it for me or Haiden. I speak for all the guys. No one is perfect and we’re under a microscope out there. The media is really quick to point a finger when someone makes a mistake.”

The media is required to hold athletes accountable for their actions. They are also required to tell the complete story.

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