Edwards joins in the Chase

AUTO RACING Charges to his second straight Nextel win Tracy third behind Wilson in Mexico

Carl Edwards kept on charging yesterday at Texas Motor Speedway, and his persistence was rewarded. Kind of like the 26- year- old wunderkind’s place in the Chase for the championship. Edwards would not be denied, surging back from a late pit stop that dropped him to sixth place and passing Roush Racing teammate Mark Martin for the lead two laps from the end of the Dickies 500 at Fort Worth.

It was his second straight NASCAR Nextel Cup victory, thrusting the surprising Edwards into the battle for the series championship with two races remaining. Tony Stewart had a solid if unspectacular day. The 2002 champion finished sixth and saw his lead in the Chase for the championship drop from 43 points to just 38 over Jimmie Johnson, who managed to pass Stewart two laps from the end and finish fifth.

Edwards, who now has four victories in his first full season in Cup racing, jumped from a tie for fourth, 107 points behind, to sole possession of third, 77 behind Stewart.

“ Four wins, man, I can’t believe it,” said Edwards, who stuck a perfect landing on his now-traditional backflip from the window of his No. 99 Ford.

“ We’re not going to change a thing,” the winner added. “ We’re out to win this championship and we’ll do it by having fun. That’s way, if we lose it, we’re still going to have fun.”

Debris brought out the sixth and final caution flag of the 334- lap race on lap 319 and both Edwards, who was leading, and fifth- place Stewart pitted for right- side tires, while Martin and several other leaders stayed on track. Edwards was sixth when the green flag came back out on lap 323. He got caught in traffic for a while, but quickly moved to third, passed teammate Matt Kenseth for second on lap 330 and erased a 12- car lead by Martin before passing him on the outside coming off turn two on the 1.5- mile oval on lap 333.

“ My hat’s off to Mark Martin,” Edwards said. “ He almost won this race. It was only the tires that beat him; he had the best car.

“ The tires were the deal. If we could get the tires, if I didn’t hit the bumps wrong and shoot the car up the racetrack, I knew we could get him, the car was so fast.” CHAMP CAR:

Justin Wilson won the Mexico City Grand Prix yesterday, securing third place in the Champ Car season series.

Holding an 11- point lead over Toronto’s Paul Tracy going into the season’s final event, Wilson took advantage of his second career pole and two good pits. He avoided big mistakes and led through 65 of the 70 laps on the 4.484kilometre Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez circuit.

“ I knew if I could just get out of the first pit stop in the lead, we would have a chance,” said Wilson, who won in one hour 58 minutes 23.479 seconds, at an average speed of 98.835 m. p. h.

Wilson also benefited from his teammate A. J. Allmendinger, who trailed him in second place almost the entire way and finished second.

Tracy managed to recover from a first- lap spin and an early black flag for blocking Allmendinger to finish third.

“ It seemed like the right thing to do at the time,” Tracy said of the block that led to the penalty. Tracy steadily gained ground from last place, helped by three caution flags, and made his pivotal move in the 64th lap. He jumped from sixth place to third in the straight.

“ It was a frustrating day for me. Somebody touched me in the back tire and punctured it,” Tracy said.

Sebastien Bourdais of France, who has already clinched the season title, didn’t finish the race.