CARL EDWARDS, No. 19 Stanley Tools Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing
What will it take to compete for the win this weekend at Kansas?
“We have Stanley on the car this weekend, which is a lot of fun. They’ve been great to work with. We had a really great program in Texas with the Ace Hardware Foundation and the Miracle Children’s hospital, so it’s good to have Stanley back on board. You guys know how I look at this race track. This is my home track, it’s as close to home as I get to race. I have my buddy Cam in the back with his family. Driving here, I get to wave at people on the highway and stuff – it’s cool for me to be here. Hopefully we run well. At Texas we finished 10th and I felt like that was a pretty good result for what we had for our mile-and-a-half program. It’s not been our strongest point as a group, so we’ve been working very hard on it. Hopefully this track will treat us a little better and we can keep developing and moving forward. Last week was really tough for us because I felt like we ran a very smart race and I feel like I made good decisions during the race and everything was going well and to get wrecked at the end like that, put us in a bigger hole in the points – it was really tough. Now we’re at a position where we need to start here and move forward just getting as many points as we can to get a little bit of cushion in case we have another bad race like that.”
What is your impression of the current rules package and the racing speeds?
“I absolutely believe the center-of-the-corner speeds are way too high. I feel like we should be out of the gas a lot more. I feel like our whole sport is based on guys racing stock cars around and manhandling the cars and being able to run close. I feel like we’ve gone farther and farther away from that because of all of the knowledge and engineering and the dependence on aero. I know NASCAR wants the same thing we all want – we want the best racing in the world and want it to be exciting, but I do fear we are getting to a point where the cars are so easy to drive and so dependent on clean air and going so fast and relying on engineering, that we are really losing the most fun part of it. For me, I hope NASCAR continues to look at a much lower aero dependent, much less aero dependent package.”
Are you trying to improve your setup week-to-week this season?
“We’re working towards that. So you understand the way I see this season, I’ve took some high risks, chances and they haven’t worked out and we’ve also had some bad luck and we have not been good enough to go get a win to kind of off-set those things. The way I see the season and the way our development is going, the things we are working on should pay off in the next few months. If we can get to that point and run well and get there and enjoy that success, I think we will be good. But, we’re not – it’s not like this week we’re coming with some brand new totally different thing.”
Do you regret staying at your previous team as long as you did?
“That’s a good question. I don’t regret much. I definitely think that everything happens for a reason. My dad talked to me about this when I was very young because I would get out of a race having made a mistake or something and I’d beat myself up very badly. He told me, ‘You have to make the best decision you can at the time and don’t ever look back.’ I don’t regret or really think badly about any of those decisions because I believe I had an opportunity there the last three years at Roush to work with some really great people. Last year we were in the championship hunt until Homestead and I feel like the pieces came together so well to do this fourth team at Joe Gibbs now, I can’t really see it working out any better. It would be nice sitting here right now saying I have three or four years development, but I really believe this group – especially when Kyle (Busch) comes back, as fast as Erik Jones is, everything feels like we’re going to have four very strong teams and it feels like Toyota and TRD are working hard. At the end of this year, I feel we’re going to be better than we are now. If I look forward to next year or the year after, I’m really excited about it.”
Do you think NASCAR should have flown a caution when you wrecked at Talladega?
“I talked to Justin Allgaier about it, I talked to Casey Mears, I talked to Mike Helton this morning. Really it’s a tough situation. In a perfect world, in my mind – okay Justin put it well. He said, we talked about what we could possibly do and Justin didn’t see me until, he didn’t even know I was at the top of the track, so he said it surprised him to see me there as much as it surprised me. What we’re going to do is wreck a lot at the end of restrictor plate races and the reason is you saw it, everybody gets in a line and there’s no reason to risk it until the last lap or two. That last lap or two are complete chaos. I would say there is better than a 70% chance we are going to wreck every one of those times we do that. Knowing that, if a guy in 10th wrecks, there’s 32 cars behind him or 33 cars, if there is a way to let those leaders go race for the fans and all the things that we want to see while still penalizing the guys in the back for running wide-open in the back, I think we should do that. If we take a step back and say, as a sport we throw the caution for a little piece of debris on the apron at Richmond because it could be a risk, but we aren’t able to slow guys down when there’s a guy stopped on the race track, those things just don’t go together. I don’t know the answer. Mike and Steve O’Donnell, they don’t have an easy answer either because from their perspective, it looked like I was not in danger and they want the race to play out. If I was one of the leaders, I’d want the race to play out. But I’m telling you, you cannot have guys driving through wrecks like that – it is going to end badly for someone. I do know this is a risky sport, but for 25th, that just seems pretty silly.”
What do you think the solution is?
“Maybe at restrictor plate races, the top five guys could have a points difference and then everybody fifth on back, or 10th on back, just give them the same amount of points. I don’t know. There’s such frustrating races because there is so much out of your control. I have to say, if a guy wrecks in front of me, on the last lap at Talladega and I’m running 25th, I would hope that I would be conscience enough of the risks there to go ahead and make sure I at least slow down a little bit and give him a chance. It’s great to say I closed my eyes and I floored it, and I’ve heard people in our garage say that. That sounds cool, but when somebody up in the grandstands gets hit by a piece of debris or there’s somebody in a wheelchair in the hospital afterwards, it just doesn’t seem very smart.”
What would you think if they didn’t change the rules package for 2016?
I have very strong opinions on all this. I’ll say this, I want to contribute to making our sport the best it can be. I believe to have the best on-track racing, we need to be running an extremely different package. All I can do as a competitor, I’m always very careful just to say what I think and then focus on what I have to do to win. I have to win regardless of what package we’re running and I don’t want to be the guy that runs around complaining all the time. I’ve contributed what I think we should be doing and I think that’s less aero dependency and I believe I’m one of about 43 guys in every race that feels that way and I believe NASCAR hopefully at some point will give that a real hard, long look and hopefully it’s palatable for the owners and not too expensive. When I ran my first Truck race here, and I know the Trucks are a little different, when I ran my first truck race here for Mike Mittler, we finished eighth with hopefully a truck that Larry Gunselman put together over at Mittler’s shop. Mike built the engine and I was basically a dirt racer from central Missouri and we did it because our truck was balanced well, we managed the tire fall off – we were able to work as racers to go out and compete. You could pass people and I think if we were to try to come and do that today, I think we would finish 30th with that same truck because there’s just not enough – the racing is not dynamic enough to allow people to go out and find ways to be faster. It’s really dependent on your engineering. I think that’s where we’re at.”
Does Kansas Speedway play any significance towards the next two weeks at Charlotte?
“These next three weeks I think are going to be very important. I think they’re going to tell us a lot about the season going forward. If in these next three weeks as a group, our JGR (Joe Gibbs Racing) Toyotas can work on some of the things we have planned and they are successful. This track feels when it’s cool like this, it feels a lot like Charlotte to me, it has a lot of speed and grip. TRD (Toyota Racing Development) has been working on a lot of stuff. Overall, these next three weeks are important and the All-Star race is really fun because it gives us a no risk to your season – you can try all the things you want to try and have a little bit of fun.”
Do you enjoy the All-Star race?
“For sure, it’s great – it’s really great to win, it’s awesome. It is a test session for everyone else, and even the winner, it’s good to practice some of the things you want to try. You can be really aggressive, which I haven’t had any problem with that lately. You can really push the envelope and see what happens.”
Have you spoke with Erik Jones about racing this weekend?
“I haven’t talked with Erik (Jones) much. I talked to him a little bit today. As fast as he is, I’ll be – the advice will be going the other direction it seems like. He’s very good and it’s really exciting to see someone that fast. He seems very dedicated. He’s really funny. He was good in the meetings either last week or the week before. Just seems like a great guy, so hopefully he does well and has a great time.”
What was it like when you were young and just starting out?
“I remember the first time Jack (Roush) said, ‘Carl’s the heir apparent to the six car.’ And I thought the heir apparent, I think that means I might be driving that car sometime. It was unbelievable, like a dream. My buddy Cam can tell you all about just sitting in the parking lot at my dad’s shop working on dirt cars. We’d go in and turn on the TV and watch the NASCAR races. The opportunity to get to compete at this level is insane. I hope Erik (Jones) is having as much fun with it as I did. It was like a blur – the best dream you’ve ever had for me, it’s fun.”
What would it mean to win at Kansas?
“It would be spectacular. I drove by this place before I was doing any NASCAR stuff, it’s almost like you don’t want to look at it because it’s all there – your hopes and dreams. And then the thought of winning here, winning that Truck race here, I could hear the crowd over the engine – I’d never heard that before. I never had anything like that happen. There’s so many people from my hometown and so many people that I’ve raced with that are going to be here, to run well here would be special. Somebody sent me a link to the 2008 race with me and Jimmie (Johnson) and that was literally the most upset I’ve ever been after a race because we got so close and I wanted to win so badly. It would be a spectacular race to win. I know Clint (Bowyer) feels the same way. I saw him lead a bunch of laps in one of them, it’s just a special place for us.”
