Fan's Eye View ~ Edwards Flipping Over Finding Victory Lane Again
3/06/2013
Jim Fitzgerald
He was smiling. Any fan who has been watching NASCAR for any length of time in the past few years, they have probably seen Carl Edwards smile. Most recently, that smile has been a “We’ll get ‘em next week” or “We just had a tough day” kind of smile that is given to an interviewer after a day at the track. Not exactly forced, but not completely genuine either.
Sunday was different. When he climbed from the car in Victory Lane, after his customary victory backflip, crowd time, and victory lap, the look on his face said it all.
“We’re back! This is going to be good,” Edwards said, and then continued with a goodwill message for all those watching. “I’m telling you, whatever it is you’re doing out there, don’t lose hope. You keep digging and things work out. I’m proof! This is just awesome!”
Edwards broke a seventy race winless streak, the second of his career, both of which oddly ended at Phoenix. When asked if he began to doubt himself during the streak, Edwards responded with a mixture of science and philosophy.
“I'm not a psychologist or anything, but I can tell you that my little bit of experience with race car drivers is we all have pretty fragile egos. That’s probably one of the things that makes us perform well is you're always questioning yourself, you're always working hard. You have to really be objective, as objective as you can, which is hard to do when you're thinking about yourself. But to try to think am I doing the right things, am I working the right way, am I being a good team player? Basically, yes, it is tough and you have to question yourself constantly. Even when you're winning you have to do that, but it's hard when you're not.”
Edwards is equally excited about his new crew chief, Jimmy Fennig, who came to the team after working with the departing Matt Kenseth last season. Most of Kenseth’salways-tough pit crew made the move to Edwards #99 team as well, making an almost seamless transition from one team to another. Edwards spoke about the talents of Fennig and his new crew.
“Those guys are just bad to the bone. I've been -- those guys have frustrated me on pit road for years, and it's neat to have them doing pit stops for the 99 team now. It's pretty awesome. Yeah, the pit crew I think was key today. I think that was huge. I've kind of felt -- I don't know, I've felt more confident, like a victory is closer, since the first meeting I had with Jimmy at the shop to see the attention to detail he has on the car and to see the intensity in the guys' eyes.”
What does Carl see for himself and the rest of the season? Maybe it is not was Carl sees, but what his fellow competitors see. In his post-race comments, Denny Hamlin was asked if he could imagine himself in a 70 race winless streak.
“No. I'd be in the nut house after 50,” Hamlin said. “It really sucks when you miss out on ones here and there, and when you finally do get that win, obviously I was emotional for a lot of reasons that weekend, but I'm sure it's a relief for someone like Carl that he's now relevant again. He really is. It's a good sign for their race team for things to come. When you win really the first real race of 2013, you've got to feel pretty good about your program.”
Whatever Edwards feels about the rest of the season, the feeling he has now may be the most important.
“I feel like I could jump over those grandstands right now. This is neat. I'm more excited to go to Vegas than I've been in a long time. Very pumped.”
What was Jack Roush’s biggest concern about Sunday’s race at Phoenix? The Cat in the Hat showed a little levity when addressing the fuel mileage and the green-white-checkered finish.
“(To Edwards) I’m just glad we didn’t run out of gas, and glad you could still do a backflip,” said Roush. “Those are the two things I was worried about.”
The new smiling Carl Edwards agreed with his car owner. “I was a little nervous about that, too. I haven’t done one of those for a long time.”
While Edwards’ back flip may not have been a perfect ten on the judges score card, his performance on Sunday was good enough to erase the troubles of five wrecked race cars at Daytona. It will also allow him to focus on the remainder of the 2013 Sprint Cup Series season, and perhaps the sport’s biggest prize at the end of it.
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