Joe Gibbs Racing driver Carl Edwards was made available to the media at Bristol Motor Speedway:
CARL EDWARDS, No. 19 Comcast Business Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing
What is your outlook for this weekend?
“I’m getting up to speed now, this place takes a little bit to get going. It’s just so fast. There’s nothing like it on the schedule. It’s fun and I think by the time we get through today and tomorrow, I’ll have caught up with the race car and the race track. This place is just a lot of fun. We’ve got a really good car, it seems fast and our teammates are fast. This season has been going well, we’ve had a lot of fun and we’ve had some good runs. We just want to get that first win.”
Do you feel very close to getting a win this season and do you feel you’ve just missed a few so far?
“That’s how this goes sometimes, there have been times in my career where I probably shouldn’t have won and it just sort of came easy and right now we’ve had fast cars and we haven’t been able to capitalize, but it’s so early in the season and so many guys are competitive. You can’t really count on anything. Last week I felt like it could come down to our team and the 78 (Martin Truex Jr.) and neither one of us could get it done, who knows. This place has been really good to me and I feel like our advantage on pit road will pay off here. Hopefully the speed we have in qualifying trim will pay off and my experience here, hopefully we can get a win.”
What has this transition been like for you to JGR and Toyota?
“Coach Gibbs and everybody has talked about this a lot that everybody took a pretty big chance putting this fourth team together. I’m representing Comcast and Comcast Business this week, the folks there were really integral in making this all happen – the deal with ARRIS and Comcast and XFINITY and everything came together really so this was possible with the 19 team. The pit crew has been amazing and all of our work last year and all the work this year seems to be paying off. Right now it’s just fun to be a part of. The whole Gibbs camp is fast and it’s cool to be driving one of these cars.”
Will the new downforce package be beneficial at Bristol?
“I think it’s too soon to tell, but I believe that the lower downforce has been better across the board. Like I said over and over, I applaud NASCAR for doing it, I think that direction is the right direction. This place, regardless of downforce, it always has a way of producing really good races. You’ve got multiple grooves, its low speed enough, but wide enough that you can do a lot of racing here.”
Why were drivers running the low groove in practice?
“I’m not exactly sure why. There might be some slight differences with the Goodyear tires, but probably the best reason or most likely reason for that is that we haven’t put a lot of rubber down on the track yet and it just seems like this place moves around a lot. We talked about it in practice, I don’t think that the race will be run on the bottom like that. I think it will really widen out, but I don’t know when it will happen. I don’t know if it will happen today or all the way where we might have to wait until Sunday for it.”
What do you think of the new Colossus TV?
“It’s pretty cool. I walked under the screens up there and saw a guy up there doing work. I don’t know how he got up there, but there was a guy up there. It’s neat. The fan experience is what this is all about and all of the tracks have been working really hard to give the fans the best experience they can have and having that ability to sit here at the event and have your big screen TV right in front of you no matter where you’re sitting, that’s really cool. I know a lot of people that I talked to this week are coming down from Missouri and the Midwest, coming down to this race and I think that will add to the experience.”
What are the challenges drivers are faced with when they think they have a loose wheel?
“I talked a little bit about it this week and I really trust my guys. My tire changers and my pit crew guys are amazing, they’re the best in the business. I really trust them. From the driver’s seat, the toughest thing is to decide if you have a loose wheel or not, it really is tough, especially if you’re running well. You feel this vibration and I’ve done it, I’ve pulled down for a loose wheel and they’ve been tight and that’s just a bad way to ruin your day. To figure out if you have a problem, it’s a team effort. You have to say you have a vibration and the tire changers say that they either feel comfortable with it or they don’t and if they don’t you come in and if they do, you have to trust them until it’s just so bad that you can’t help but come in. It’s really a tough decision.”
How much say do you have in your paint schemes?
“I didn’t get to see Dale’s (Earnhardt Jr.), I saw one small picture and one that looked pretty cool. I didn’t get to look closely at them. For me, my sponsors, my team and myself we all work together and it’s called an approval process, but I don’t think I’ve ever turned one down. Everybody does a really good job. They’ll come up with a paint scheme and they’ll basically send a picture to everyone or mass email and everyone gets to vote on it or say what they like or don’t like. Really lately, I’ve had some really good paint schemes and I’ve liked all of them. I know for me as a driver, I’ve had some I didn’t like very much, but the car is fast so it kind of grows on you and it’s great because you can’t really see then from inside the car that well anyways.”
Do you have any desire to compete in XFINITY races for JGR?
“I thought about that last week up in the booth, it might be the right time to jump into one of those cars. They’ve been so fast. To me, the reason I ran full time for seven years in the series was to get the experience and to get every lap I could and at the time you had the opportunity to run for both championships at once and that was really fun. Now if I were to do it, it would really be to run at specific race tracks that I love. The road courses in the XFINITY Series are really fun and I’d consider running those. If there were new tracks that they were going to, maybe places I hadn’t run, I’d really enjoy that. For right now, I feel like Cup cars and XFINITY cars are so different and I’m learning Dave Rogers (crew chief) and my new team still enough that I need to focus on the Cup car. That’s how I’ve made the decision. I haven’t seen an opportunity that I want to be pulled away from that Cup car for. Now if we win here this weekend and some neat stuff comes up, I’d definitely consider it.”
What has it been like to see the streak Kyle Busch has been on and what does it feel like?
“All I know is there have been times where it seemed like we were winning, we would win the XFINITY race and then the Cup race and you would just win a lot over a period of a couple weeks and you wish you could bottle that up and figure out how to recreate it because it’s really fun. For me, it just feels like you’re on this train and it’s awesome. Everything is going great and everything you do works. That’s a good time. The good part about Kyle’s (Busch) success now is that I’m on his team so I can see what he’s doing, I can talk to him about it, but I don’t know that there’s a specific thing you do. I just think sometimes its working and things go your way and you have to be fast too. You have to be there and seize the opportunities, but it really is fun.”
How are you able to benefit from Kyle’s success as his teammate?
“Understanding the setups and driving styles and being able to talk to people about how they approach the race is definitely helpful, but everyone does things differently. The coolest part for me is to see that this can be done right now out of this shop with these cars and TRD engines. That’s the best thing you can have is someone out there setting the bar. That’s great.”
Have you talked with Kyle since Texas?
“I haven’t talked to him since last week really. It’s about saying – there are so many things that happen during a race. Last week, we qualified well, we ran well and we had one bad break. That’s what cost us that opportunity and that one was obvious. What’s less obvious is when you go to Martinsville and Kyle (Busch) leads that whole race, we struggle through the beginning of the race, got it together at the end, but Martinsville is an example where we’re able to go back and look at the entire weekend and compare what we did to the 18 and if we see things that are outstanding, we obviously would change them. If there are things that aren’t clear we can go talk to them and that’s really the advantage to having a teammate like that in that situation is that when you it’s not that obvious, you can go pull it out of them and fortunately we all work really well together so I think we’re for the most part honest with each other and give each other good answers.”
What made you donate the money to Speedway Children’s Charities last week at Texas?
“I didn’t donate the money, I was just part of the process. FS1, for me going up in the booth, agreed in exchange for me doing that agreed to donate $5,000 to Speedway Children’s Charities and for qualifying Miller Coors informed me that this year they decided that each pole our 19 car gets, they’re going to donate $1,000 to Speedway Children’s Charities also. They said if we get a six-pack, they’ll donate $25,000 so that’s great. Speedway Children’s Charities, for the folks in here that know about Speedway Children’s Charities, you know how great it is and if you don’t, it’s spectacular. It’s a team of people that take this money, millions of dollars a year, Bruton Smith and everybody put this together and they vet all these charities and make sure that every dollar you give goes toward a truly beneficial charity and one that benefits. For me, for Fox and for Miller Coors to come on board and do that out of the goodness of their hearts is really cool.”
