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[/media-credit]Carl Edwards, driver of the No. 99 Fastenal Ford Fusion, is the defending winner of the Sprint All-Star Race. He answered questions from the media after practice for tomorrow night’s annual event.
CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Fastenal Ford Fusion – CAN YOU TALK ABOUT WINNING THE ALL-STAR RACE LAST YEAR? “Last night my wife and I were watching the Speed Channel and they had that show, I can’t remember what it’s called – Inside the Headsets is the name, I think. It was after the pit stop competition and it was neat to watch it because it was kind of a behind-the-scenes look at the whole race last year and that’s the first time I really watched the race and saw everything that went on. It was really, really neat, and even now a year later it’s still soaking in that we won the All-Star Race. That’s huge. It’s a lot of fun. I feel really good about our car here today. It’s fast. I’m excited about qualifying tonight. This is one of the most fun qualifying events in all of racing. It’s neat to come down and have your crew be part of it, working on getting off of pit road and getting on to pit road as part of your qualifying lap is really fun, so it’s a neat event. It comes at just the right time for us. We can let our hair down a little bit, go race real hard and not worry about points. That’s nice, so I’m excited about tonight and tomorrow night both.”
HAVE YOU FELT ANY DIFFERENCE WITH THE NEW AERO PACKAGE? “I didn’t notice any difference. I didn’t run around any other cars or anything, but I didn’t notice anything. If they wouldn’t have talked about it a little bit and told me before practice what was going on, I wouldn’t have known, so no effect from where I sit.”
YOU HAVEN’T WON THE COCA-COLA 600 BUT IT FEELS LIKE YOU HAVE. DO YOU FEEL THE SAME WAY? “The 600 for us historically starts out terribly. We run really poorly at the beginning and then we get better at the end and that’s the average Coke 600 for us. We’ve run really well. I don’t know the best we’ve finished – third or something like that – but that race is built, on paper, it looks like the perfect race for us. It’s a mile-and-a-half race, long race, a lot of changes throughout the event. We’ve just never been able to put one together and win, so that would be one of the big ones. There would be a lot of pride in winning that race.”
HOW FAR ARE YOU WILLING TO GO FOR A SHORT-TERM GAIN OF TAKING OUT OTHER PEOPLE? “Pretty far. This is the All-Star Race. I think this is a good night for all of us to just say, ‘Hey, we’re gonna go out here and race for the win.’ You don’t want to be an idiot or anything, but there would be less patience – if your car is fast there will be less patience and I think there will be less patience expected from all of us. That’s good for you guys and good for the fans. It’ll make it more thrilling, but we all know there is $1 million out there for the winner and I’d hate to guess how much chaos there would be if there was a green-white-checkered, double-file restart for $1 million bucks. That would be insane.”
WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ALL-STAR MEMORY? “My favorite memory, I’m not sure what year it was, but I think it was 1999 or 2000 when they had the rain and everybody was wrecking in turn one and NASCAR let them get the backup cars out. I think that was pretty neat. I remember sitting at home and as a viewer it was really exciting because I thought, ‘Aw, it rained. That screwed the whole show up,’ and then NASCAR made that call to let everybody get their backups out and work on it and I thought, ‘Man, this is cool. Let’s make another bag of popcorn and get settled in. This is gonna be a heck of a race.’ That was pretty cool.”
WHAT DAMAGE DID YOU DO TO THE CAR AFTER THE RACE? “I’m pretty sure we raced it again. It was pretty torn up. The splitter just dug into the sod out there in the tri-oval and it tore it up pretty well. I saw the replay last night. I might have hit my head even on the steering wheel pretty good. It was just an ugly victory celebration. Marcus and Bruton were nice enough to turn it into a Scott’s advertisement with the re-seeding of the grass, but, still, I think if you walk through the garage and you ask and honest opinion, did they mean to do that? Were they hiding something? About 90 percent of the garage would say that we were hiding something on that car and we didn’t want them to see it. That says a lot about how much they think of me, but it was really a mistake.”
WERE YOU? “No. Bob was pretty upset about that. And I was not trying to be aggressive. It ended up looking like an aggressive maneuver, but the grass was pretty aggressive.”
YOU HAVE HAD GOOD RESULTS WITH GREEN-WHITE-CHECKER RESTARTS. WHAT MAKES FOR A GOOD DRIVER IN THAT SITUATION? “There’s a lot of luck. Last week stands out to me. Last week was an example of things just worked out for us, and I think Greg Biffle got pinched in a bad spot and got sent to the back. There’s no better two-lap racer than Greg Biffle. He’s aggressive and not afraid to stick his car somewhere where it needs to be or maybe where it shouldn’t be, but he’ll make it work. That’s a compliment, but I still think the double-file at some of these tracks is very difficult. A guy can miss one shift or a guy can go three-wide when you don’t expect him to and, all of a sudden, everything can go from great to terrible for you. As a driver, you just put yourself in the best position you can and when it goes well, it’s great. When it doesn’t go well, you just have to accept it. If our team has been more successful, there’s nothing I can point to that would contribute to that other than just trying to not put myself in a bad spot. But it’s really tough. They’re really dynamic times in the race because there’s a lot going on. You’re not usually racing in a pack like that. You’re running different lines that you wouldn’t normally run because you’re forced in a position. It’s really tough.”
CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE SEASON SO FAR AND WHAT LIES AHEAD? “We feel like there are some really big opportunities for us. The reality is we’ve got to run well. We can’t have another wreck or run out of fuel or make a mistake on my part, or anything like that. We’ve got to run well, get ourselves up there with a bigger cushion inside that top 10 and the tracks that are coming up are great for that. This weekend will be a nice, fun weekend, but next weekend is back to racing for that championship and, hopefully, at these tracks coming up we can build a little bit of a cushion and maybe get a win or two, that would be huge, and get ourselves in the Chase.”
WHAT’S GONE WRONG THIS SEASON? “The things that have kept us from being farther up in the points, there are a few specific things. Number one, we ran out of fuel at Phoenix, which surprised us. I think we lost about 10-15 points there. The Bristol wreck, I believe we had a top-three car there and that cost us 35 points or something. The Talladega wreck cost us quite a bit and I think there might have been one more, but I think if you take those low-water marks out, we’d be in the top three or four in points solidly and it would be looking just fine, so we understand that we don’t need to panic or do anything crazy. We have fast-enough race cars. We’re working well together and, obviously, the equipment is good enough with Matt and Greg running the way they are, so we’re just digging our heels in and being mentally tough and going racing.”
WHAT DO YOU REALLY EXPECT IN THE ALL-STAR RACE? “You never know what’s gonna happen. Last year, Kyle and I got spread out enough so there was really no opportunity for something like that to happen. I can tell you, and maybe I strategically shouldn’t say this, but I think I can speak for most of the drivers and be completely honest and say that if a driver’s car is faster than the guy in front of him, and it’s for $1 million bucks, there’s not gonna be a lot of patience. As the fans and the media, all of us for the sport, we’ve just got to hope that some cars are faster than others and you can get close enough to guys to make some things happen. The circumstances, honestly, like you said, we haven’t seen that excitement. Honestly, the circumstances haven’t presented themselves. If they present themselves, I’m telling you me and every other driver out there we’re ready to go get that $1 million bucks and I think all of us are on the same page.”
IF YOU WIN THE ALL-STAR AND WERE GIVEN THE CHOICE OF THE $1 MILLION OR AN AUTOMATIC SPOT IN THE CHASE, WHAT WOULD YOU CHOOSE? “I’d take the $1 million bucks. It’s like a choose your own adventure book. If you presented drivers with choices like that throughout the year, it would make for some entertaining, I guess it would be fodder for you guys to write about. I think at the end of the day the drivers who earn the most points throughout the year should be the ones racing for the championship, whether it’s Chase format or not a Chase format. One race probably shouldn’t knock another guy out. I don’t know if that’s right, but it would be a tough decision.”
