Carl Edwards catches Marcos Ambrose on the last lap to win at Montreal

  Finally Carl Edwards gets to do another victory backflip (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
  

   By Mike Mulhern
   mikemulhern.net

   It might not have been the prettiest race of the season, but it was certainly wild enough, Sunday's Nationwide tour stop at Montreal's Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. And after four hours, numerous spins and crashes, and some rain, Carl Edwards wound up the winner, when Marcos Ambrose, after dominating the event, hit the curb the last lap and gave the race to Edwards.
   The race was two experiments – one, for Goodyear's new rain tires; two, for the Canadian crowd.
   The next questions – Did the rain tires work well enough for NASCAR to consider them as an option for Sprint Cup road course events (principally Watkins Glen, since it never rains at Sonoma)? Did the show entice the promoters to schedule a return engagement next season?
    This was the third Nationwide race on the Canadian course.
    And then of course, considering the rain, and the cool 60-degree temperatures, should NASCAR look for another weekend for this race…..even perhaps look to make this event a full Sprint Cup event.
  

  Left, right, left, right....nice crowd, wild race....and what next for NASCAR in Montreal? (Photo: Toyota Motorsports)

  
Ambrose and Edwards were teammates for Saturday's Grand-Am preliminary, but Edwards wiped out the car in practice.
  "I can't believe we caught him, and I can't believe we won the race," the surprised Edwards said.
   
HERE are some Montreal video highlights.

    "It was the most dynamic race I've ever been involved in," Edwards said. "There was more happening in that race than any I've ever been a part of. I was never bored."
   Ambrose shrugged off the loss: "I made a mistake on the last corner -- the last lap, and lost the race because of it. 
    "It's disappointing, but you have to take the lumps as they come. 
    "We led a lot of laps (60 of the 76)….and I'm starting to get annoyed with this track, to be honest with you.  That's three years in a row I have seemed to given it away."
   

   Marcos Ambrose: one of NASCAR's hottest stories of the season, even with Sunday's last lap loss (Photo: Toyota Motorsports)

   The event, with a 2 p.m. EDT start, was extraordinarily long. "It just took forever, this race," Ambrose said.
   And after each caution, a restart. "I must have had five or six restarts off the front, and didn't mess up any of them," Ambrose said. 
    "So it's just disappointing. My guys, I let them down.
    "Carl put me under pressure at the hairpin. The track was probably a little damp there, and my car just refused to turn. 
    "He got a great run down the backstraight, and it turned into a drag race.
    "He was in that blind spot -- that right rear. And I didn't quite know where he was…so I braked as light as I did, and out-braked myself pretty much. 
    "I couldn't make the turn, bounced the curb, and Carl did the slingshot off the corner."
   Ambrose is a noted road racer, but Edwards is not.
   The bottom line for Edwards, though, was not the win and the signature back flip, but the points he picked up on title rival Kyle Busch, who had never raced Montreal before and who, with the weekend rain, never really got a lot of good practice on the Formula One road course in the heart of the city. Busch finished 10th , and his Nationwide tour lead heading this week to Atlanta has been chopped to 192 points.
   Jacques Villeneuve, for whose late father the track was named, finished fourth. Villeneuve has been trying to jump-start a NASCAR career, after much of his career in Formula One, so this run was a big one for him.
    "It was like being in a pinball machine every restart," Villeneuve said. "It was just a matter of surviving."
    Villeneuve has raced the track before in Formula One, but he said he's never raced under such wild conditions. "It is the wildest one," Villeneuve said. "If we did that in F1,  you would survive five meters and probably be rolling and have no wheels attached. 
   "This was definitely crazy. It's a good thing those cars are strong."
   And the verdict on Goodyear's new rain tire? "It had a lot of grip in the 'wet,' Villeneuve said. "But on a drying track it made it move around….so it made it fun."
    NASCAR, Goodyear and the teams will be analyzing the performance of the rain tires and the procedures used during the race – to change from regular tires to the rain tires.

   
So did Jacques Villeneuve run impressively enough to earn a second look by NASCAR team owners? (Photo: Toyota Motorsports)
   


  
  
NASCAR's Nationwide tour stop at Montreal's Circuit Gilles Villeneuve