VEGAS ROLLERCOASTER RIDE

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Team Ford Racing had one of those frustratingly inconsistent days in the Shelby 427 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Three Ford Fusions drivers were among the top-10 in the 285-lap, 427-mile Sprint Cup race. Two others had heartbreaking problems in the final laps that cost them dearly, and two others finished near the bottom of the 43-car scorecard.

Bobby Labonte of Yates Racing carried the TFR banner with a solid fifth-place run. Greg Biffle of Roush Fenway Racing backed his Saturday victory in the Nationwide Series race with a seventh-place on Sunday afternoon. And Jamie McMurray continued his strong early-season showing with a ninth for Roush Fenway Racing.

But the late-race heartbreaks for TFR were heartbreaking, indeed. Carl Edwards, winner of this event last year for Roush Fenway, was running top-10 when the engine in his Fusion lost power on the next-to-last lap. He coasted around to a 17th-place finish, the last driver on the lead lap. A few laps earlier, Paul Menard of Yates Racing had crashed out while running in the top-15, with a top-10 possibly within reach. Earlier in the race, Roush Fenway drivers Matt Kenseth and David Ragan had fallen out with engine issues.

Hometown favorite Kyle Busch won the race ahead of Clint Bowyer, Jeff Burton, David Reutimann and Labonte. The rest of the top-10: Jeff Gordon, Biffle, Brian Vickers, McMurray and Dale Earnhardt Jr.

The spate of engine problems brought this reaction from team owner Jack Roush: “I think we misjudged how fast this tire was gonna be, and the engines turned more,” he said after the race. “I had great confidence in this engine because it wasn’t something new or experimental. It’s the same specs we had all of last year. The tire didn’t fall off as much as we expected and we just over-revved the engines. We also chose the wrong axle ratio because it was 200 RPMs more than the other would have been. But if you win the races we did last year and make the Chase and do what we did (last weekend) at Fontana, there’s no reason to be nervous. The fact that [the RPMs] crept up a little didn’t raise the alarms it should have.”

Roush said it appeared Kenseth’s early-race DNF was from a broken valve and Ragan’s from a broken valve spring. He let his teams know that RPMs were an issue, and things held together nicely until the final laps, when Edwards’s engine went. “When it comes down to that, with Carl, you have to go for it,” Roush said. “You try to win the race and do the best you can. You run as close to the limit as you can and as hard as the guys try; you have to squeeze every ounce out of every component in the car. We just went over the edge with the RPM. It’s unfortunate, but that’s what we did.”