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[/media-credit]Since the last lap of the Ford 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway last season, the question for Carl Edwards has been what was it like to finish second?
Now with Daytona 500 qualifying done, Edwards doesn’t have that to answer that question as he won the Coors Light Pole for the biggest race of the season. Instead of talking about last season, the talk will be centered around that pole.
“It’s an amazing feeling,” Edwards said after winning the pole. “I just cannot thank Jack Roush enough for all the work that he’s put in. Doug Yates, I feel like he should be sitting up here with us. Those guys have done an unbelievable job of working through the transition to the EFI. It’s just amazing. To know for the next week Bob and all of us are going to be working on the fastest racecar here at Daytona and preparing it for the biggest race of the season is a lot of fun. It’s great.”
So does this pole actually mean anything?
Well, for starters, he will get to lead the field to the green flag to start the season in the biggest race. That’s always good for team confidence.
He also gets to savor the moment for an entire week, unlike any other pole throughout the season.
He has locked himself into next year’s Bud Shootout already as it returns back to its original format.
He doesn’t have to worry in the Gatorade Duels as he can as hard as he wants and as long as he avoids trouble, he’s locked in. Edwards says that he’ll still go out and mix it up because, “If I were to not race and not understand the dynamics that are going to happen during the daytime here at this racetrack with this package, I’d be giving them something. I have to go out there as a driver and mix it up, race, see how our car handles.
Beyond that, to win the Daytona 500 pole, it takes a lot of prep from the team with regards to working on the car, testing the car in the wind tunnel and perfecting the engine package during the two-month off-season.
As team owner Jack Roush said, “It obviously starts in the shop. Robbie Reiser, he’s under the weather today as well. But he’s worked really hard all winter. Great manufacturing program for us. Chip (Bolin) is behind the scenes leading the engineering group with the simulations, with the predictive things, the wind tunnel, kinematics and suspension. I tease him as he’s writing up new stuff all the time. There’s a lot to this. There’s a lot more than driving a car fast and having a fast engine. You have to coordinate every piece so it’s ready to do its job when it’s time.”
Edwards adds, “After seeing how hard everybody works all winter, how much pride the guys take in how these cars qualify, it does mean something to me. It’s a sign of the strength of your team. It’s not that we just have one car up there. To have two cars, to have that whole front row, I mean, that says a lot about Roush Fenway Racing, about Ford.”
By winning the pole, it sets out a statement in some respect that this team is ready to come back strong in 2012 and contend once again. It already has people thinking of Edwards and the No. 99 Fastenal team for the championship. If he doesn’t do well in the Daytona 500, it may take away from that but with finishing off strong last season and the pole, things look good for 2012 early.
“Feels nice to pick up right where we left off,” Edwards said. “I’ve been telling everybody, it seems like every media question, How great would it have been to have one more point? How did you deal with that this off-season? I think this is nice to come here and show everyone that, hey, it isn’t just talk. Everybody at Roush Fenway went back and worked hard and kept their heads down and dug for, just like Chip said, the best racecars we’ve had in a long time. I thank Jack, Chip, Bob, Robbie Reiser, Doug Yates, everybody who has built these racecars, for not letting the disappointment of not winning that championship, not letting that slow us down, but instead giving us real motivation.”
In looking back at last season, there is no regrets as Edwards said they had a good season despite some of their luck.
“Bob said, No, if we started the Chase again, we’d do the same thing, put our efforts in the same places, I wouldn’t change a thing,” Edwards said. “As we sat there and talked about it, there was Martinsville and Kansas in particular where we were truly running somewhere in the high 20s or low 30s, running laps down. We were able to come back those days and finish, I don’t know what it was, ninth in Martinsville and fifth at Kansas. That doesn’t seem as exciting as a victory. But those days I was more proud of our ability to gather up those points. Those two days themselves were probably 40 points that we didn’t really deserve. So at the end of the championship, when you look at it, we tied a guy who won half of the races. I venture to say if we would have been able to win half of those races, we would have just dominated that thing
“So I guess that’s the long version of me saying we did the very best we could and there weren’t any races where I got out of the car and felt like, Oh, man, I could have got another spot. I got out of the car at seven or eight of those races and thought, Thank you, Lord, for the spots you gave me and we were able to capitalize on it. In the end it ended up a tie.
“Another simple way to put it is we didn’t lose it. We didn’t go out and do anything wrong. We went out, raced hard, did well, and they came in and beat us.”
