Carl Edwards finished fifth last weekend at Talladega. Credit: Autostock

Q&A: Carl Edwards

Edwards is up to sixth in the Chase for the Nextel Cup after finishing fifth at Talladega on Sunday. Edwards, with wins this year at Atlanta and Pocono, is 100 points behind first-place Tony Stewart with seven races to go.

Edwards met with the media this week to discuss the Chase, returning to his hometown track and the madness of last week's race at Talladega.

Q: Carl, it's especially interesting this week. You're heading to Kansas Speedway, which I guess we could call your home track, just a couple hours away from Columbia, MO, your hometown down I-70. Must feel good to come back home right in the thick of championship contention. Also you won there at Kansas in 2003 in the Craftsman Truck Series race.

Maybe give us quick rundown of what it feels like to come home, and also that 2003 win there, then we'll go to the media for questions.

	Credit: Rusty Jarrett/Getty Images
	Inside the Numbers Carl Edwards' Cup career Starts 42 Wins 2 Top-5s 10 Top-10s 17 Poles 1 Laps Led 157 Avg. Start 20.8 Avg. Finish 16.5

Edwards: Yeah, is awesome to be back home. Like you said, I'm just a couple hours from the racetrack. I'm not certain if it was 2003 or 2004 that we won that race. It was an awesome win. I mean, it meant so much to win that close to home and at a track that I didn't -- I didn't really ever think I'd get a chance to race that.

I'm excited to be back there in a new Cup car we just built and hopefully go for the win.

Q. I wanted to ask you if you could kind of summarize how you thought the driving was this past weekend at Talladega. A bit earlier today, Rusty Wallace said he thought they're going to have to get to the point of barring bump drafting at the restrictor-plate tracks. Do you believe that's going to be a solution and can you define the racing and talk about your thoughts on that?

Edwards: Yeah, that's a really good point there. I don't know, the racing to me seemed awesome. It seemed like everybody did a really good job. The problem with racing like that is that it doesn't take much. I mean, there's so many factors, you got momentum, the aero push, a little bit of aero pull from the guy in front of you. You can see things happen, and they happen so quickly, you end up hitting a guy, maybe you meant to hit him just a little bit, you hit him a little too hard, then there's this massive wreck. Everybody points fingers at whoever started it.

To me that's going on the whole race; it's just varied amounts of chaos. There's not much we can do about it as drivers. We're placed there with this package. We have to go do the best we can. It takes really close, risky racing to get to the front.

I don't know what exactly Rusty Wallace said about the bump drafting and stuff, but I heard a good idea from Darren McDaniel, a guy working on our tires. He said, "Man, we ought to mandate some sort of really fragile front and rear bodywork, especially the front bodywork, to where if you bump somebody too hard, it would close up your radiator opening or something, make some sort of penalty, a physical penalty, for bumping people."

Even with that, I don't know that all the time you could control what happens. I think it's just a function of the size of the racetrack, the banking, and the rules package. It's going to be really tough to get the cars apart.

Q. Did you think it was getting out of hand this past weekend?

Edwards: I thought everybody did a pretty good job. I didn't think it was too out of hand. There were some wrecks that were completely insane there. I don't know exactly what they stemmed from. But I know from my perspective, I bumped Ryan Newman one time in a manner which I thought was, you know, completely OK.

I tried to line everything up and just barely touch him. I did it right in the tri-oval thinking that, you know, it won't be that big of a deal. Ryan Newman almost wrecked in front of the whole field. I thought to myself, "Wow, this is really touchy stuff."

I don't know that anyone was really trying to get too wild or too out of hand. It's just there's so many variables going on. If everything's just right or just wrong, it's so easy to send the car spinning.

Q. Could you talk a little about the impact that Rusty Wallace had on your career, either direct or indirect, when you were kind of learning this. Did he help you make up your mind to get into this?

Edwards: Yeah, Rusty Wallace is someone, you know, a lot like Kenny Schrader who came from my general geographic area, kind of achieved a dream that me and so many other short track racers around this area have. All those guys, Rusty, Kenny, guys like Tony Stewart, guys that came from racing at the local dirt tracks and made it, they helped a lot.

Rusty Wallace in particular, him and I had a couple connections, especially through Mike Mittler, Mittler Brothers Racing. Mike helped Rusty a lot. I heard Rusty Wallace stories seems like two or three times a week working at Mike Mittler's. I looked at Rusty's picture every day when I walked in the shop. Rusty's presence was always around us, for sure.

Q. How would you summarize the mood of Jack Roush as well as your teammates with having such a dominance in the top five for this year's championship?

Edwards: Well, having all five of our cars in the Chase is unbelievable. I don't know if a person were starting from scratch and trying to accomplish that goal, I don't know that you could ever -- I don't know how much work it would take. It just seems like an insurmountable goal, unattainable one, and Jack Roush has somehow done it.

I think everyone around the shop, from what I can see, is really excited about the prospect of one of the cars winning. We have a 50/50 chance statistically. You know, just other than that, everyone's got a little bit of bounce in their step. Everyone's kind of excited to be working on cars at the shop that can potentially be championship winners.

I don't know, after Talladega there were a couple torn-up cars, some bad days for some of the Roush guys. I think overall the mood is awesome. Everyone is still close enough that any of us could win. I'm just glad to be part of it.

Q. I know a lot was expected of you out of your first year full-time. However, has your performance so far this year kind of exceeded what you expected out of yourself and what others expected, as well?

Edwards: You know, I think you hit it right on the head: our performance this year was not at all what we expected. It's what we hoped for. After that first win at Atlanta, everything kind of changed. It went from, "Wow, we'd be super happy to run in the top five" to, "Man, winning felt awfully good, we'd like to do it again every week."

The perspective has changed, the expectation has changed. Overall, this season has been one of just achieving, you know, dreams: the dream of winning the Nextel Cup race, the dream of being in the Chase. I don't think the word "expectation" was really anywhere in there. We hoped for this, and now we kind of raised the bar for ourselves.

As far as other people's perspective and expectations, I don't know exactly what they were. I try really hard just to focus on my own goals and desires. I know those definitely have changed throughout the season. Now we're looking to win a championship, which is something I didn't expect to be doing at the beginning of the year.

Q. Dale Jarrett won the race. He's probably old enough to be your dad. What do you think about that?

Edwards: Oh, man, you know, age really doesn't mean much when you're out there racing. I've learned that. Kyle Busch is just as tough to racer as Mark Martin. It doesn't really matter much what age a guy is.

TeleconferenceEdwards on his wild Talladega ride and his Cup chances Sign up for TrackPass now BUY YOUR NEXTEL DRIVER PHONE

It is kind of interesting the dynamics that go on with such a huge range of age groups and different guys being old enough to be other guy's father. I think it was pretty neat to see Dale Jarrett win that race. I know it meant a lot to everyone within the Ford family, that being a Ford race. I don't know a Ford was expected to win, even though the front row was Yates cars and Yates Ford. I think it was cool to see Dale Jarrett win that race.

I don't know, I grew up watching him and seeing him do that. It was cool to see him do it firsthand from right there behind his car.

Q. Looks like the Yates collaboration with Roush is starting to yield some results. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Edwards: Yeah, you know, I'm not the best guy to speak of the Yates/Roush merger because I didn't know -- I didn't get to experience firsthand the engine packages before that.

But I can tell you from what I've heard and what I can see with the race results, the engines are awesome. I mean, they're just spectacular. I couldn't ask for better engines. I don't know exactly how we've improved things or what exactly has changed technically with the engines.

All I know is that three or four years ago, all I heard was how much power we were short of the other teams. Now, going down the straightaway, I never feel like I'm getting pulled by other guy's engine.

I'm really -- I guess it's another piece of the puzzle that I'm really benefitting from coming at this time when Roush is so strong. I think the engine package is a huge part of it.

Q. It wasn't that long ago that we talked with your friend in Columbia stealing your Office Depot standups out of the store for souvenirs. Here you are racing for the championship. How intense and how much of a change is that?

Edwards: You know, it's crazy. I don't know, just so many awesome things have happened. Winning a couple races, being in the Chase, I mean, going for this championship, all that, it's just been a dream come true. It's really neat to be able to come back to Missouri and hang out with my friends, you know, see how much -- I guess it reminds me of what things were like just a few years ago and how grateful I am to be in this position.

I'm just trying to have a lot of fun with it and not let it really change anything that I do or change me in too many ways. I'm just trying to keep that same hunger and desire to go out and be the best, have some fun. I've been having a good time with it.

Q. Can you identify the main reasons for your being so competitive so early in your career?

Edwards: Boy, you know, I really do believe that the main reasons are just it's the team that I'm with. I mean, I'm with the greatest team in motorsports. We talked about the engines earlier, the Roush/Yates engines are awesome. The cars have been developed over the last two decades to be the best they can be. The management style and the way the teams share information is awesome. I think all that stuff adds up to the most awesome team I can be a part of.

Then as for me personally, I just do my very best. I just try my hardest, try to learn from my teammates and learn from my mistakes. We've also had a little bit of good luck. I think there's a lot of factors. I think definitely the biggest thing is the team I'm with has really helped me to kind of speed up my learning curve.

Q. Since this is your first full-time season, do you think there's more pressure on you in the championship or less since, as you said earlier, you didn't know what to expect at the beginning of the season?

Edwards: Boy, you know, I think as far as outside pressure, there's less on us. I mean, I don't think anyone expects us to go out and win this championship. That makes it a little more simple to go out and do our best.

Credit: Autostock

On the flipside of that, myself and my crew chief and most of the guys on our team, we're really perfectionists. We don't go out here to do what everyone expects us to do; we go out here to win. That's what we do this for. On that note, I feel like I can imagine what it would be like to win a championship in your first full year of Nextel Cup racing and how awesome that would be. That kind of gets me fired up a little bit, and that is a little bit of a pressure cooker for me internally, how awesome it would be to go out and do this.

From the outside, I don't feel any pressure. For me personally, I'm putting a lot of pressure on myself to go out and do this.

Q. You were asked about pressure. Is there a feeling at Roush, five guys in the Chase, looks like Tony and Ryan pulled ahead a little bit, there's still a lot of racing left, but is there a feeling that you guys sort of need to make a move pretty soon, and also with all these mile-and-a-half ovals if that sort of plays in your favor as well?

Edwards: Yeah, I mean, that's right on the money as far as how I feel about it. Ryan and Tony - especially Tony - he's been awesome and excelled at every type of racetrack on the schedule through the second half of the season.

I look at our team as a team that can do that, but not for each particular driver. I feel like on the whole, our team, every driver, can run good or run well at the mile and a half tracks or the tracks that are kind of that standard shape because we work so hard at that type of race car.

I think making it through these first few races, I can only speak for myself, but I feel like making it through New Hampshire, Dover, Talladega, only being a hundred points behind the leader, is a home run for me.

I feel like coming up on these tracks like Charlotte, Atlanta, Kansas, Homestead, I feel like we can make up a lot of ground at those places. I do feel like this next month or so really plays into Roush Racing's hands.

Q. The extra races you ran last year, could that sort of translate into how well you're doing this year?

Edwards: I mean, it directly translates. The thing about this type of racing is that even if everyone has the same ability level and the same race cars, running more laps at these places, seeing more scenarios take place, that really helps a guy. Any time I can get laps, any time I come back to a track for the second or third time, it's just exponentially better and easier. I have a better time with dealing with the racetrack. I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Q. You're running the full-time Cup and Busch seasons. Any thoughts about running both series next year again full-time?

Edwards: That's something we haven't quite announced yet how we're going to do it. I don't think all the sponsorship is in place yet. My mission is to run both series next year full-time again with the goal being to win both championships. I just think that would be the most awesome achievement that we could have. I'm going to go out and do it and try my hardest.

I think one way or another, I really hope I'll be in the Busch Series again full time next year along with the Cup Series. It's just fun to get to race that much.