Sunoco Pit Move: Loudon

Sometimes the measure of a championship team comes more from the way it handles adversity than how it handles success.

For Carl Edwards and the No. 99 Ford team, Sunday's pit stop misfortunes took away what could have been a strong opportunity for his second victory of the season. Still, Edwards rallied for a 13th-place finish at New Hampshire, keeping his title hopes solidly in place.

"Some days you're going to have mistakes that take a winning racecar and turn it into a 13th-place racecar," crew chief Bob Osborne said. "It was good to see we were able to bounce back from that the way we did. To me, that's the sign of a championship-caliber team and I believe we have one here."

Starting 22nd, Edwards was able to climb his way into the top 10 during an extended green-flag run, moving up to seventh after the first set of pit stops. Following a caution for debris on Lap 121, Osborne opted to send Edwards back on the track with two fresh tires, a decision that paid off handsomely as Edwards quickly moved into the top five and began tracking down front-runners Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Martin Truex Jr.

When the leaders pitted on Lap 193, Edwards was scored first for two laps, then headed for what was expected to be a routine four-tire, green-flag stop. Right-side tires were no problem, but while work was being done to the left side, the jack slipped out from under the car and the No. 99's left side dropped to the pavement. (watch video)

"When [jackman Tracy Duncan] went to jack the car up, instead of the jack rolling with the car, the car slid on the jack itself and slid off the end of the jackpost," Osborne said. "We have what we call a flat-tire jack that slides under the car and we put the actual race jack underneath the fuel cell to jack the back up to get tires on it."

The team then scrambled to get the car back off the ground in order to replace the tires. Duncan raised the back of the car high enough for rear-tire changer Jason Myers to make his change, then moved the jack back to its original position as front-tire changer D.J. Copp completed his work. In all, the stop took an agonizing 47 seconds before Edwards was able to rejoin the action.

"They did a good job rebounding when that happened," Osborne said. "We ended up losing only one lap. It could have been a lot worse. But it's unfortunate, it's really inexcusable and we won't let it happen again."

Compounding the situation was a lack of cautions that would have allowed Edwards to quickly get his lap back. Stuck in 26th place as the first car one lap down, Edwards was forced to bide his time until a debris caution with less than 50 laps remaining finally put him back on the lead lap.

Six laps after the resumption of the race, Edwards had another scare when he narrowly dodged David Stremme's spinning car.

Over the final green-flag run, Edwards was running lap times equal to those of eventual winner Denny Hamlin. He was 18th with 30 laps remaining, moved to 15th 10 laps later and passed Johnny Sauter for 13th with eight laps to go.

"The good news is we had an awesome car," Edwards said. "The bad news was it fell off the jack when we were leading the thing pitting under green, but everybody kept their composure.

"The car was still good enough. We finished 13th, but this is a race winner right here. It's a huge step forward for us with the Car of Tomorrow. It's just terrible. This is the same thing that happened to us at Pocono last year. We had a plan. We got the car back up and we only lost a lap, so it wasn't the end of the world."