CARL EDWARDS, No. 19 Stanley Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing
How much do you enjoy this race track?
“This is just pure driving. We get to drive these race cars for really 90 percent of the lap you’re doing something. You’re sliding the car around, you’re shifting, you’re choosing your line – the braking is tough. You’re trying to manage the grip on the race track. This is as good as it gets. If we could make all of the races such that you had to drive the cars like this, it would be a blast. It’s a really good time. It’s the most fun race of the year to me.”
Does it bother you there has not been a repeat winner at Sonoma in the past decade?
“No, not at all. I feel like we can win this weekend. I felt like we could win a bunch of these races and it just hasn’t worked out, but I think the reason you’ve seen these 10 different winners in the last 10 years or 11 in the last 11 – I’m not sure how many it was, but it’s because it’s such a tough race to get everything right. It’s not always the fastest car wins, it’s the guy with the right strategy, with a little bit of luck, the cautions have to fall his way plus you have to be fast. It’s a tough race, but there’s nothing saying we couldn’t win this one and win it the next few years. Those stats, they don’t mean anything once the green flag drops.”
Why are there so many first time winners at Sonoma?
“There must be a reason. I’ll tell you the thing that really stands out here is just the grip level. There is so little grip relative to many of the places we race. There are so many opportunities to make mistakes that it probably makes it or there are probably more errors in this event than any of the other events so maybe there is just more opportunity for guys to slip up or get a pass. I don’t know. It’s crazy out there. That last restart, I’ve started up front, I’ve started 10th and 12th and 15th and it’s a full melee, it’s crazy. A lot can happen and maybe that’s why you get the different winners just wild things happen here.”
Are the races at Sonoma and Daytona similar from an opportunity perspective?
“They might look the same from the outside – the restart here might look similar to the Daytona restart, but it’s a much different race. I’d say the chance for a problem or a wreck or something is just as high in either of them. This one is just at a lower speed and it feels like people are willing to take bigger risks. You get to slide the car sideways more. They look similar and the risk level is similar, but they’re so completely different. There couldn’t be two races more different than here and Daytona from the driver’s seat.”
Would you expect Jeff Gordon to race you differently for the win being his last race at his home track?
“I know for me personally, I race everybody the same on that last lap and this is one of those places where if you’re running a guy down and you’re faster than him, you have to take every chance you can to get by him. I don’t know, I think it’s one of the neat things about this race track is there are opportunities to pass and there are opportunities to force a guy into a mistake. Really no matter who it is and what you’re racing for, this is a good one to win so I think everybody will probably race really hard.”
What do you expect from the test session at Kentucky?
“We’re approaching the no downforce package and that’s the package I’m all for. I applaud NASCAR for making this change, for trying something – I mean NASCAR wants the same thing we all want, they want side-by-side, door-to-door, nose-to-tail racing, fighting for the wins and you see that stuff at a place like this because the speeds are down and you can run a soft tire. If we could do that at these mile-and-a-halves and put it back in the driver’s hands, I think that’s huge. Kentucky will be fun to try – we tested that package a little bit at Richmond and it wasn’t as big of a change there as I thought it would be. I think at Kentucky it will hopefully be different. Not just for your car, but that smaller blade will put a smaller hole in the air so the guy in front of you will hopefully affect you less and that’s what it’s all about. We want to race cars on tires on pavement, not cars through the air.”
Was there ever a time when that type of racing existed in NASCAR?
“If you go on YouTube and watch some of those races from the early 80s and even the early 90s, it appeared those cars could run very close to one another and my belief is that’s what made this sport. That’s why I personally watched stock car racing over Indy Car racing and Formula 1 is because I wanted to see cars racing close to one another. I didn’t want to see a technical battle. Some people want to see guys race spoilers and splitters and wings and downforce and side force, but they aren’t stock car racing fans. That’s just not stock car racing. We should have stock cars from the perspective of aero dependency. I believe it’s really realistic that we can do it. I believe in Goodyear, I believe in these drivers and I believe we can go run around at places like Michigan or Charlotte sideways and smoking the tires. Tim Richmond used to qualify up there at Michigan and I know people that would pay admission just to watch him run one lap smoking the right-rear tire around that place and to me, that’s stock car racing. I really do appreciate NASCAR going that direction.”
How many chances do you take in a road course race?
“There are probably only one or two laps in the race, probably the whole weekend, one or two laps that I feel like, ‘Man, that was a perfect lap.’ The rest of them, they’re full of mistakes so you make mistakes the entire time here. I read a book one time and I think it was Juan Montoya or somebody they were quoting or talking about and with this type of racing, it’s not how many mistakes you make, it’s when you recognize your mistake and how you deal with it. You’re just managing it the entire time. There’s a lot going on in the race car and so to me, that’s fun and it really does give you an opportunity – just those last six or eight laps with Jeff (Gordon) and I last year, it was just a battle of who made the least amount of mistakes. I’d screw up and he’d catch me and then he’d screw up and I’d gain a little advantage. It’s fun to race like that. When it’s so hard that everyone is screwing up to some degree, that’s what makes racing fun.”
Will you be aware of other drivers around you that might be desperate to get a win and lock into the Chase?
“I should be, but I hadn’t thought of that. This weekend would be an opportunity for a guy to muscle his way up there and maybe deal with it afterwards if he thinks he can get that win. You also have to be careful with that too because it’s tough to really take a bunch of risk hoping for a win because if you screw up you can put yourself in a bad points hole and that’s kind of a downward spiral to where you just try harder and harder. I should look at the points, I’ll do that before the race starts and kind of know what I’m dealing with.”
