TOYOTA NASCAR Sprint Cup Series (NSCS)
Carl Edwards – Notes & Quotes
Kansas Speedway – October 16, 2015
Joe Gibbs Racing driver Carl Edwards was made available to the media at Kansas Speedway:
CARL EDWARDS, No. 19 SportClips Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing
How was practice today and are you excited to be racing at Kansas?
“It is definitely good to be here and be racing and be driving in the Sprint Cup Series at Kansas. I talk about it every time I come back here, it’s a really special place for me and I already had the chance to talk to some folks that I raced against before I got into stock cars and that was cool. I was talking to Dale Roper in the garage about our race when I was driving Scott’s truck and Clint (Bowyer) was in that race too so for me, it’s a cool place to come and a win would be huge just because of that, but it would also obviously be huge because we want to advance to the next round of the Chase and be able to pursue our ultimate goal, which is the championship. It’s an important race and practice went well, really proud to represent SportClips – came on board in a huge way to sponsor the New Hampshire race and this race. They actually offered me some tickets to the Royals game tomorrow, which was really nice of them. Just super people and hopefully we can do well for them.”
Is there a possession you would trade for a win here at Kansas?
“I can’t think of a possession that I wouldn’t trade and I have a really nice airplane. For a win here right now, I can’t think of anything I wouldn’t trade. What we do and everybody at the shop does and everybody at JGR, what we do is go try to win these championships and we give everything we’ve got. If it were that easy, for me personally there is no amount of money that a win right now and especially here would be worth or wouldn’t be worth.”
Can you assess Chris Buescher’s performance this season in NXS competition?
“As far as Chris Buescher, he’s awesome. He seems like a great guy and he really races very well. It seems like he’s not easy to fluster even when things do go poorly for him. From an outside perspective, watching and just being around him a little bit, seems like he’s really confident and he’s very even and steady and that’s why when I was broadcasting that last race, I said publically that I think he’s going to be the guy to beat. He’s going to be tough to beat. Those guys don’t quit over there either, I know those guys well enough at that shop to know that they’re not going to give up and he’s doing well.”
How much did the first win at Charlotte with this team help you settle in with JGR and Darian Grubb?
“That was basically, exactly it. We got that win and that was exactly what we needed. We just needed something to rally around and to let the pressure release. We knew we didn’t have to go out and set the world on fire after that, it gave us a little time to work together and get to know one another better and now I feel so much different the second time around. To take a snapshot at the first Kansas race and now, our team is different and we feel like we’re just better. A lot more calm and I feel a lot better about it.”
Are you going to the Royals game tomorrow and were you a Royals fan growing up?
“I honestly was a Cardinals fan and they’re good folks. Mike Mittler, I drove for Mike and he had a deal with the Cardinals and they had a fan day or press day and they let us bring our truck over there and I got to sit there and sign autographs and stuff. I met Albert Pujols and I didn’t even know who he was. He was the coolest guy ever and I just thought he was some guy who worked for the team or something, I had no clue and he was so kind and nice and turns out I saw him on Sports Illustrated the next week or something and called him and was like, ‘Man, I can’t believe it.’ Those guys are so good, but then the guys at the Royals, they let me throw out the first pitch last year and Ned Yost and those guys, they’re just so cool and huge race fans and really they were so good to me that it was really fun to watch them last year. I don’t know who I’d cheer for now, they’re both good teams. I don’t know if I’m going to go or not, I don’t know if we’re going to be done with all our stuff. I think the game starts at 2:30 or something. I’ll see, I hope so, it would be fun. I can tell you one thing, after throwing out the pitch that was about the most nerve wracking thing I’d done in a long time. I walked off and went back in the dugout and one of the pitchers just looked at me and said, ‘It’s awfully lonely up there isn’t it?’ I said, ‘Yes sir.’ That was pretty crazy, but it was a neat experience.”
How do you determine how aggressive to drive on the track?
“It is tough. Right now it is so difficult at some of these mile-and-a-halves, everyone is very protective of their positions and everyone is aggressive and trying to get every spot you can. It’s racing and you just have to do the best you can. You have to make decisions in the heat of the moment and every once in a while stuff happens. I’m definitely glad we didn’t suffer any damage from it and I wish it wouldn’t have turned out the way it did to end up ruining the 88’s (Dale Earnhardt Jr.) day, but it was just tough racing.”
How do you decide to change teams and been able to be successful with your new team?
“I don’t know what it is, but definitely it appears – it’s just anecdotal or something, I don’t know the stats – but it appears when people make changes the performance goes up and sometimes it looks like even guys that basically switched organizations both had a rise in performance, at least in results. I can tell you one thing, when you make a change like the change I made, it’s such a big change and everything is so new, it made me really question everything and in some ways it probably spurred me to be a little more self-critical and try harder just to prove myself to a new group of people. Man, I don’t know all the psychology of it. I hope it yields the same result that it’s yielded for some of these guys, I hope we finish very strong.”
How do your fans excite and energize you?
“I didn’t ever think of the fans as part of the performance, the team or the driver – I really didn’t. We build the cars and we come to the track. Yeah, we meet fans and we appreciate them, but I didn’t understand how important they were until I went through my first real lull in my career in 2006, maybe first part of 2007 when things went down and all my expectations weren’t being met and I was questioning. I had had one good year basically and I was struggling and the fans meant so much to me. I had so many fans come up to me and say, ‘We believe in you, we’re behind you 100 percent, we know you can do it.’ Man, that to me, there was a day I was having a really bad day and some fan came up to me and basically gave me the pep talk I needed at that time and it really helped me. That’s really the moment when I realized that the fans and support can not only feel good, but it helps your performance. It means a lot to me.”
Do you feel Joe Gibbs Racing is still a title contender despite your teammate’s struggles?
“I feel like so much can happen at this race and obviously at the next race – the whole thing can get turned upside down in one lap at Talladega. I don’t know, I’d be reluctant to say I think these are the two teams that are going to be the favorites because by definition this format, or by design it’s almost impossible to predict. I think all you can do is look at who has the most speed, who is really fast in a group and say the fastest group probably has the best chance because they’re fast it makes everything easy. There is no tell. I don’t know.”
Do you feel like your team has enough speed to compete for the championship?
“I really believe we have the most well rounded performance – from the cars, engines, pit road, the calls that are being made – it just feels like we as a group we’re able to get the best finishes, most consistent good finishes. We don’t necessarily have the fastest speed at every race, it seems like we have a good solid group. We don’t have any area where we’re really lacking and that overall has helped us.”
What would you like to see regarding the tires moving forward?
“The way I understand it, basically Goodyear doesn’t want any tires to fail. That’s their business, to provide safe tires. As NASCAR takes more downforce away and the speed comes down the corner and the loading on the tires comes down, it allows Goodyear to make a tire that has a little softer compound that is more fun to race on. Goodyear, the tire they can bring can only be so good because of the amount of force that’s in them on the tires. If you look at the tires and wheels versus the amount of force that’s on them, it’s higher per square inch than any other form of motorsports right now. Goodyear will respond with better tires as the car becomes better with less downforce, less speed in the middle of the corners.”
What do you think about going to a downforce package next season?
“It’s a direct correlation, the more aero dependency the cars have, the less fun they are to drive and worse the racing is. In theory that’s how it works and in practice, that’s how it works. NASCAR is definitely going in the right direction with their announcement for next year’s package. It feels like they’re going to continue to go in that direction. It’s very important to remember that low downforce is relative. Where we’re going next year is not low downforce, it could just get better and better – we could have some really spectacular racing if it was more of a no downforce situation. Hopefully they’ll continue to keep doing that.”
What do you think the goal is with the lower downforce package?
“It’s pretty complicated – who knows what everyone’s goals are, right? Sometimes it feels like the goal of the sport is to make it so everyone is more equal or to where it’s easier to drive. That appears on the surface to be good for the sport, but I think it’s important to remember that race cars should be hard to drive, there’s supposed to be a lot of talent involved with engineering and I think NASCAR is recognizing that. I’m telling you what they’re doing for next year is a huge step in the right direction. Kentucky was a blast. Darlington was really fun. To me, that’s one step in that direction. To take about five or six in that direction and then have some of the greatest racing that’s ever existed, that would be really cool.”
Do you feel Kansas can be a tricky race in this round of the Chase?
“This race can be really tough because the restarts are going to be insanity. Everyone is going to fight for their positions like we saw last week. It’s so fast – you’re going so fast in the center of the corners here that one wiggle, one problem that someone has can be a massive wreck, and we’ve seen that here. There’s no telling – anything can happen. As long as we’re driving around at 200 mph, everybody is getting every inch they can – statistically it can be really tough.”
How much further would you like the downforce to continue?
“For me, it’s pretty simple. So the question is, why would you want some factor that would affect the cars behind a guy? So why would you want to rely on downforce, so that’s air around the car being the only thing that can affect the way one car can affect the other. If there’s a guy following me with the current package, if he’s running the bottom and catches you, you can move to the bottom and you can basically take away his grip with your car. That’s not something you want in racing. To me, you’d get rid of all the aero dependency so the car in front of you wouldn’t have any effect. Ryan Newman astutely pointed out that if the cars had lift – it’s called a spoiler because it spoils lift, that’s the whole idea. A regular car drives down the highway and if it doesn’t have a spoiler, low pressure builds over the top because it’s curved like an airplane wing and the car lifts up. If these cars had lift, the guy in front would be at a disadvantage, the guy behind wouldn’t have as much lift and he would gain grip and catch the guy in front of him. I believe that’s why you saw some really good racing back in the day. There wasn’t much downforce and it may have been a little bit of lift on the nose. When we go back and look at some of the races, there was some really neat racing. The other thing that happens in the cars is the size of the car is very flat, so they have a large surface area of where the air can work. A difference in pressure makes a big force. When two cars get close together, a little venturi sucks them together. That’s why you see the inability to race side-by-side once the speeds increase because the inside car gets sucked up into the outside car. In my opinion, you need to round the sides of the car so there’s less surface area for that to work on. All these forces are happening, all the engineers understand it, all the drivers know how to use them to their advantage. The further away from all that stuff we can get, the better.”
