Joe Gibbs Racing driver Carl Edwards was made available to the media at Martinsville Speedway:
CARL EDWARDS, No. 19 Sport Clips Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing
How are you going to capitalize on your previous success at Texas Motor Speedway?
“This track is a lot of fun. Eddie (Gossage, track president) and everybody puts on a great show. It’s obviously a really important race for us. We didn’t have the best run at Martinsville, that was frustrating. I was really excited about that race and then it went about average for me. Now we’re here at a track that has some great history for me as a driver and our mile-and-a-half program is stepping up. The car was fast in practice. Maybe you guys were all right, maybe Texas is my best chance in this round. It’s going well so far.”
Did you feel anything different here compared to previous races?
“I think that rules package is a huge step forward. We talked about that a lot. I think especially a track like this where the pavement has aged, Goodyear has the tire to match really well. They might even be able to go a little softer with them. Having the cars move around and driving a little bit sideways and have to manage the throttle is a great thing. I think that package is something to really look forward to. This track, even in qualifying trim, it drives in that manner where you can move a little bit more, you can correct here. The tires will take a little bit more slip. I really enjoy that type of racing – it’s a lot of fun.”
What’s your favorite memory of Jeff Gordon?
“My first time on the track with the Sprint Cup Series in a race was at Michigan. I just remember that race – I remember everyone because I couldn’t believe I was on the track with guys like Jeff Gordon and Rusty Wallace and everyone else. Just the intensity of being able to race with those guys is crazy. As I’ve raced with Jeff all these years, I think my favorite memory was Sonoma where, for me that road course win was huge and to have Jeff Gordon finish second – really it meant a lot to me to hold him off and win there having watched him race and been successful at that track. The coolest part was him coming to victory lane and congratulating me on a good race – that was really special to me.”
Have you learned anything about driver code or rules in the last week?
“Not really, no. I don’t know what it all means. My plan is just to go forward and race like I have all year to try to win one of these next two events and be locked into Homestead and go win the championship. There’s so many factors in this situation with so many different things happening, it’s really difficult to line it all up and say, ‘Okay, this is why this happened and this is how to proceed going forward.’ It seems pretty complex. I’m just going to focus on my deal and we’ll move on.”
How have you used driver code in the past?
“Are you serious? I think you guys have covered most of that. I had forgotten some of the things I have done. Car racing, everybody drives their car and you just have to do what you think is the best and what is the right thing to do at the time and all of us have done all sorts of things. Some of them were right, some of them definitely weren’t right. You just have to go out there and race everybody the way you want to be raced. In some ways you have to demand the same in return. Mark Martin very early on, we were racing at Bristol in 2004 maybe or 2005, and Mark is a mentor of mine, he is one of my heroes and helped me a ton in my career and during that race he ran into the back of my car – it was all I could do to not wreck. At the time, I wondered what happened and didn’t know what was going on. On Monday, I called him, ‘Hey Mark.’ He said, ‘Hey Carl.’ I said, ‘Remember that race when you ran into the back of me and I didn’t know if there was something that I needed to know there?’ He said, ‘No, for the last few races you’ve been racing me hard and I thought you were taking a little more and I just figured if that’s how you want to race, that’s how you want to race.’ I was like, ‘Whoa, no I don’t want to race like that.’ He said, ‘Okay, fine then don’t and we won’t.’ ‘Okay, cool.’ He said, ‘See you next week.’ That was it. It made me realize I personally try to race everyone the way I’d like to be raced. Everybody makes mistakes. If I make a mistake, I try to say I made a mistake there. For the most part, I think everyone does a good job with that in the garage.”
Do you understand where the line is and what kind of repercussions there could be?
“I talked to Matt (Kenseth) a little bit. I think a lot of Matt. I guess I don’t know. It was a shock, the penalty to me. I think everyone will be on pretty decent behavior because of that. If that’s how it’s going to be, we definitely have to be careful. I don’t have a #FreeMatt t-shirt. I could get one from Denny (Hamlin) I bet.”
What has the mood been at the JGR shop?
“Everybody is just blazing forward to win a championship. I saw Matt (Kenseth). We have a group texting and he was talking about fantasy football this week. He seems to be pretty relaxed. As a group, we feel like we have a shot to win this championship. That’s what my 19 team is working on. I talked to Darian (Grubb, crew chief) a little bit about it as we were going to lunch. We have a fourth team that we started, we’ve never worked together and here we are with a shot at this and we have fast cars and need to keep working on that. I really feel that the competition is as tough as it’s ever been. I feel like to go out and do what we need to do, we need to focus on being as fast as we need to be. Everybody in the shop appears to me to be doing just that – they’re not looking backwards, they’re looking forward.”
Do you have to flip a switch to beat a driver like Jeff Gordon even though you admire him?
“We race, if you watch, you’ll notice that we race each other pretty hard, all of us. I think that people always ask, ‘Who do you hate on the race track or who do you not like?’ It’s the guy in front of you. You just have to go beat every single person. Each week, there might be a different person that is fast. All that stuff in the race car, that’s how I approach it. It’s me versus everyone else. I have to go do the best I can. I will say, from a storybook perspective, last week was pretty cool for that 24 team and for Jeff (Gordon) to win there. That’s just amazing. I just saw a little piece of one of the commercials of his victory lane – it was neat to see a guy that happy and to have his family there. It looked really fun. As a racer, I can definitely appreciate that moment, but we definitely don’t want him to have that moment at Homestead. So we’ll go out there and try to beat him as best we can.”
Would you call a driver if there was an incident even if you aren’t sorry just to calm the issue?
“I’ve not done what you are saying, but for me my personal thing, the way my father taught me when I started racing that I stick to, if something happens on the race track and it costs someone else their car or the day or the race or something, I believe it’s very important to respect that guy and the work his team put out. I’ve made some bonehead moves and had to call people and say I did not mean to do that. Other times it doesn’t matter because they are mad at you big time. To me, it’s really simple – if you mean to do something and you meant to do it and there’s a reason – it’s just as important to tell the guy I meant to do it for this reason because of this, this and this and you can still feel bad that it cost him his day or his team’s day. I just think it’s important for me at least to let him know where you stand and be honest. If it was an accident, call and tell him it was an accident. If it wasn’t an accident, you don’t really have to call him, but if they ask you have to say why you did it. The most important thing is if you do feel bad about it at all, it’s important to let them know. Going the other way, if something happens to me and someone doesn’t say that was inadvertent; I do assume it was on purpose. That’s how I take it.”
What has gone right and wrong for you at Phoenix in the past?
“Phoenix is one of my favorite race tracks. It’s the first place I’ve ever raced on pavement. It was a really big deal for me in the Copper World Classic in 2001. That place is special for me. I’ve had some really great races there. Struggled a little bit lately. The 20 (Matt Kenseth) had a good test out there and we feel it could be a good race for us. You just never know. As that place ages it changes a lot. With this package, it’s important to have track position. It’s really important your car is perfect. If someone is better, they will beat you and there’s a lot of grip. For me, it’s a fun place to go. I just hope it’s a good weekend and better than the Spring. It is a very precise track. You have to have perfect restarts, your car has to be really good and with the aero package the way it is, and that place hasn’t widened out a ton, it’s tough to pass. Just like anything, every time you come back, you come back with better stuff and different strategy and different setups, so you just don’t know until after that first practice sessions what you have.”
This is not a Matt question.
“Part of Matt’s (Kenseth) penalty should have been to come here and be the only one that has to answer questions about Matt – that would have been great.”
Did you have any issues flying in yesterday?
“I made a wise choice to not fly in last night. It was kind of new for me. I am becoming a better decision maker. I looked at the weather. We had a thing to do with DeWalt and I wasn’t able to make it. It was a really cool thing. They gave away a Harley Davidson motorcycle, tools and I wanted to be here. I looked at that weather and you guys lived it and I was back home, a long ways away.”
