Carl Edwards capitalized on the only mistake of the day by Marcos Ambrose in the final sprint to the finish to win the NASCAR Nationwide Series NAPA Auto Parts 200 at the Circuit Gilles Villenueve in Montreal.
Ambrose led 60 laps in the race and survived several late race cautions and weather changes but made a crucial mistake with the checkered flag in sight.
"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," Ambrose said following the race. "I'm racing against some pretty awesome drivers in some great equipment. We led a lot of laps and I'm starting to get annoyed with this track, to be honest with you. That's three years in a row that I have seemed to given it away. It just took forever, this race. I must have had five or six restarts off the front there and didn't manage to mess up any of them. It's just disappointing, you know. Congratulations to Carl (Edwards) for winning the race. He crashes the sports car on me on Saturday and then he goes and steals the win from me. I'm starting to think I don't like him. Congratulations to him. He put me on a crutch there at the end and I made a mistake."
Ambrose scored his third consecutive top-10 at the track, this time a runner-up finish. He has led 124 of the 224 laps at Montreal over the last three years, each year leading the most laps of any driver.
Running on rain tires after a mandatory change for the entire field on Lap 61, Edwards hounded Ambrose for both laps of a green-white-checkered-flag finish and made the winning pass after Ambrose's car got airborne over the curbing and lost momentum in the final turn of Lap 76.
"The two laps, Andrew Ranger (who finished third) and I went side by side into Turn 1 (on Lap 75. He pinched me off into the grass — which I probably would have done if I was him, too — and I just drove into his door, and we came off of Turn 2 banging doors," Edwards said.
"It was wild, and I thought the whole time Marcos was going to get away with this thing. I broke away from Andrew, and I just gave it everything I had on that last lap, and Marcos just made that one mistake through the curves at the end and gave me the chance to get by."
Edwards led only three laps at Montreal, leading for the first time in three starts at the track. It's his second consecutive top-10 finish at the track, and first road course victory in NASCAR.
There were only four leaders the whole day, all who made up the top four finishers. Ranger led 10 laps en route to a third-place finish. It's his best career finish in what was just his sixth Nationwide Series start.
Jacques Villeneuve led three laps en route to fourth place at his home country's track which is also named for his father. Brad Keselowski finished fifth.
Tony Raines, Jean Francois Dumoulin, Stephen Leicht, Brendan Gaughan and Kyle Busch rounded out the top 10.
Edwards's win helped him gain some points in the championship, and Busch now leads the point standings by 192 points over him.
Busch had been running as high as second as the race came to a close, and he was disappointed with his 10th-place finish in his track debut.
"That was a really tough way to end a long, long day. We got banged around a good bit out there today but still we were looking like we had a shot at winning this thing at the end - at least a top-five," Busch said. "(On the green-white-checkered restart) they got bunched up in front of me. We had to check up and got spun from behind. It's disappointing, to say the least."
There were 11 caution flags for 31 laps throughout the day, and a red flag on Lap 61 for cars to transition for a wet track.
The Nationwide Series returns to action with a double-header with the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series next weekend at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
