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[/media-credit]Don’t ask Carl Edwards about what happened to he and his No. 99 Roush Fenway Racing team last season. He’s done talking about it, ready to focus on 2012 instead of dwelling on what went wrong or what they could have done differently last year.
He’s done talking about it because he says once he parked his plane at the airport a few days ago and walked through the gates at Daytona to start testing, his mindset switched to what he needs to do now. The confidence and excitement that he felt when arriving are more than he’s ever felt before.
But it isn’t so easy to just let go of what the NASCAR world witnessed. From Daytona to Homestead it seems that even after doing everything he could he was always one position short of where he needed to be. That included the Daytona 500, which Edwards has yet to win.
“Well, it would be huge,” said Edwards if he were to win it next month. “That would be an understatement. That is an understatement. Last year we were so close following Trevor [Bayne] across the start-finish line. I learned a lot. I feel like our restrictor plate program is better. I feel that Greg [Biffle, teammate] and I have grown together to be able to do well at these races. It’s the Daytona 500 and I’m very, very excited about it.”
Some might find it ironic that Edwards started and ended last season by finishing second, losing two important things in the process. As Bayne went onto win the biggest race of the year, and his career, which was just two races old at that point, Edwards headed back home and gave himself a headache by wondering what he should have done differently to get around Bayne.
In fact, he even called the race winner to ask. Not being able to let it go until he had a solid answer about how he let the Daytona 500 slip away. Bayne though, didn’t have answer, telling Edwards he couldn’t say whether he should have went high or low. So Edwards left Daytona and moved toward trying to win the championship, which he came up short on too.
Those disappointments have left him. Making many appearances during the off-season he says that the common theme that he’s seen is how excited everyone is about the new season and new opportunities. It’s neat he says, to be apart of something that has a whole group genuinely excited and pumped up about 2012.
That includes crew chief Bob Osborne, who seemed to take last year’s ending the hardest. He didn’t attend Champion’s Week in Las Vegas, instead staying home to work and better the team. Edwards saw what Osborne was going through and says the whole team experienced it with him before putting it on a shelf and moving on.
“If we weren’t upset about it, if it wasn’t something that made you just want to – or that frustrated you, then you’re probably not in the right sport,” said Edwards. “But I believe, I’d like to believe that we’re wise enough to not let that get the best of us, to just go out and perform and do the best we can. That’s competition. That’s life. You’ve just got to keep on going and do the best you can.”
They’ve internalized, compartmentalized and put the 2011 book on a shelf. The slate is clean and the year is fresh and it only matters what they do now. Except Edwards and his team all too well that the odds might be stacked against them. Because they’ve been in this position before, trying to come back from disappointment only to never see their expectations come close to being met.
“I think I’m one of the ones that kind of started that deal in 2008 and 2009,” Edwards believes of the second place curse as it’s being called. “We’ve lived that. It’s really painful. I hope that kinds of takes us out of that – keeps us from repeating that statistic. I hope that experience that we had before in 2009 will keep us from doing it again.
“But this sport is tough. Your success last year does not guarantee you anything right now. That’s just the way this sport is. We’ve made the mistake of resting on our laurels and saying we’re good, let’s focus on a coupe little things. But you can’t do that. You’ve got to keep looking at every little thing.”
It’s why Edwards and his Fastenal team will again be ones to watch as they look to right the wrongs of the Daytona 500 and Chase from last season.
