Richmond drama courtesy of Stewart and Edwards

Associated Press

RICHMOND, Va.

Not even a meeting with NASCAR officials helped Carl Edwards understand why he was given a penalty at Richmond International Raceway.

“We had to just agree to disagree and that’s the way it is,” Edwards said.

In contrast, Tony Stewart knew exactly why he lost Saturday night’s race.

“We did everything we could to throw it away, it got taken away,” the defending Sprint Cup champion said. “I’m pretty ticked off about it.”

Both drivers were less than pleased when they left Richmond, where late drama spiced up what had been yet another bland NASCAR race. There were just three cautions — one was a NASCAR-planned competition — through the first 310 laps and none had much impact on the race.

That changed when Jeff Burton smacked the wall, leaving behind debris that brought out the yellow with 89 laps remaining. It was Stewart and Edwards on the front row for the restart, and both believed they were the leader.

Edwards sailed away at the green flag, and was immediately penalized for jumping the restart and passing the leader before it was permitted.

That part is not in dispute: replays clearly showed Edwards rocketed past Stewart and had cleared him before reaching the official restart zone.

And that’s against the rules, no matter who was leading the race.

The penalty dropped Edwards to 15th, he briefly fell a lap down, and wound up finishing 10th.

Stewart wasn’t any happier about his race, which ended with a second-place finish to Kyle Busch.

Stewart had led four times for 118 laps, and was out front when NASCAR called a caution for debris 12 laps from the finish. The leaders pitted, and Busch beat Stewart off of pit road, and easily handled the champion on the restart.

Stewart was annoyed with NASCAR over the caution, and his team for the slow pit stop.

“When the caution is for a plastic bottle on the backstretch, it’s hard to feel good about losing that one,” he said. “And we gave it away on pit road. We’ve got some work to do on pit stops right now. I don’t know what their malfunction was.”