TALLADEGA – Few drivers have had as much success as Carl Edwards this season.The Missouri native leads the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series in wins this season and is currently 10th in points.
He would be higher in points if not for a penalty early in the season. While Edwards has dominated mile-and-a-half tracks like Atlanta and Texas this season, he’s never had much success at superspeedways.
“Superspeedways have been kind of our weak point here, but that’s almost by design,” he said. “It’s four races a year that are totally different from other things we do, so we really focused on the meat of the schedule, and we’ve just kind of got what we could get at these places.
“We could spend more time and energy on these things, but they’re still such a crapshoot that it might not really help you. But we can get better and we probably will eventually, once we get everything else wrapped up.”
The driver of the No. 99 Office Depot Ford for Roush Fenway Racing posted a fifth-place finish at Talladega in the fall of 2005, but hasn’t had much luck at the 2.66-mile speedway since then. Edwards finished 42nd in last year’s spring race and posted a 13th-place run in the fall.
Talladega wasn’t kind to Edwards on Sunday either, as the Roush Fenway driver battled tire issues throughout the day. He had problems with his right front tire several times during the Aaron’s 499, bringing out the second caution of the day when he blew a tire and hit the wall on lap 118. He finished the day in 40th place.
“It’s just too bad,” Edwards said. “This Office Depot Fusion was a really nice new car. Looks like Matt Kenseth had the same trouble. We saw that we had a …pretty big problem in practice; we just didn’t fix it well enough. I’m glad we didn’t take anybody else out, and I guess I just hope a Ford Fusion goes to Victory Lane today.”
The defending Nationwide Series Champion was running up front in Saturday’s Aaron’s 312 before getting caught up in a big wreck on lap 72. That ended his day as well as his chances at a good finish.
Edwards said there’s no real way to translate success on a mile-and-a-half track to success on a circuit like Talladega or Daytona.
“There’s nothing you can really translate from those tracks to here,” he said. “These superspeedways, restrictor-plate racing is its own animal. It’s not like you can really drive it harder and go faster, you just have to be real smart, have some luck and have a great big engine, you know?”
While Edwards would like to win at a restrictor-plate track, he also realizes success at Talladega doesn’t necessarily have much to do with the driver.
“I want to win every race,” Edwards said. “But I know what makes a fast race car here and it’s not the driver, so there’s nothing I can do about it. My car will only go so fast, that’s as fast as it will go.
“All I can do is drive as fast as I can with what I’ve got and have faith that the guys are using their resources the best way for the whole season back at the shop. If I went crazy and wanted the guys to work 24 hours a day, seven days a week for this race, and sacrifice something else, that wouldn’t be wise. So I just have faith in those guys as managers.”
