DARLINGTON, S.C. — Carl Edwards took the lead on the last pit stop and held off Denny Hamlin on a restart eight laps from the end for his first Southern 500 victory Sunday night.

Edwards was two laps behind early in the nearly five-hour Sprint Cup race, slowed by a record 18 cautions at Darlington Raceway.

Pole-sitter Brad Keselowski was second and Hamlin finished third. Joey Logano was fourth, followed by defending champion Kevin Harvick and the Busch brothers, Kurt and Kyle.

Edwards won for the second time this season, and gave Joe Gibbs Racing its seventh victory in the last 10 events.

JGR swept the weekend, with Hamlin winning the Xfinity race Saturday.

“I guess we made it Carlington for a couple of minutes,” Edwards said as he crew taped over part of the “D” on the painted Darlington sign along a retaining wall. “This is the Southern 500. This is amazing.”

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It’s the seventh time in 11 seasons as a fulltime driver Edwards has won multiple races.

Keselowski started on the pole and by far led the most laps with 196. But he was beaten out of the pits by Edwards on the final pit stop.

Almost as much as drivers enjoyed Darlington’s throwback paint schemes and retro-1970s theme, they loved the low downforce package given the cars – the same that was used to rave driver reviews in Kentucky earlier this year.

“Man, I loved it. This is as good as it gets,” Edwards said of the low-downforce package. “This is what it’s about: sliding cars, the tires falling off. If there’s any way we can run this in the Chase, I hope we do it.”

Keselowski agreed. “It separates the race car drivers from the pretenders and that’s the way it should be,” he said.

NASCAR returned the Southern 500 to Labor Day weekend for the first time since 2003. The track closed NASCAR’s summer as one of its crown jewel events for 53 years until losing out in Sprint Cup realignment.

But NASCAR leaders thought the time was right to put the iconic race back in its traditional sport. The race featured a 1970s, throwback theme, with 35 race teams racing in retro paint schemes.


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