Carl Edwards puts his artistic design on a wooden mural race car as part of Ameriquest's Soaring Dreams Youth Program at Bristol (Tenn.) High School. Credit: Courtesy

Edwards soars ahead with inspiring dreams

BRISTOL, Tenn. -- Carl Edwards turned the tables on the "I'm not a role model" mindset Thursday, spending part of his day with a group of students in Bristol, Tenn., as part of the Ameriquest Soaring Dreams program.

"I think everybody's a role model to somebody," said Edwards, a Nextel Cup star-on-the-rise who is in his second full season in the series. "I don't think I'm any different now than I was then; I just have the opportunity to touch more people."

Carl Edwards

"Then" was when Edwards was handing out business cards in a last-gasp effort to realize his dream of being a stock-car driver. Last year, Edwards' dreams came true in Technicolor as he won four races and back-flipped to a third-place finish in the Chase for the Nextel Cup.

Roush Racing drivers Edwards, Matt Kenseth, Mark Martin and Greg Biffle play an intricate role in Ameriquest's Soaring Dreams Youth Program, which, along with Portraits of Hope, bring together youth from hospitals and after-school programs to explore personal goals and societal issues through education and art. Portraits of Hope is an organization that develops creative projects merging the healing arts with inspirational public art.

Ameriquest is serving as the primary sponsor of four of Roush Racing's Busch Series programs in 2006.

"I think it says a lot about Ameriquest's devotion to this," Edwards said. "I only have a certain number of days that I go do things for Ameriquest, and they picked this as something they want to spend the time and invest their money on.

"For me it's perfect because I love kids, doing stuff with kids. It's always fun to go to school for me; I wasn't the greatest student," he said. "I always like doing stuff that was different -- I liked it when the teacher would shut down class and we'd get to talk with someone ... [but] we never got a racecar driver; we got some pilots, that was pretty cool."

As part of each interactive educational workshop, teens have the opportunity to share their creative expressions by creating murals replicating the shapes and colors depicted on the Ameriquest Mortgage Company Soaring Dreams race car, which sports a unique and distinctively different paint scheme in select Busch races this season.

ALSO Other Ameriquest Soaring Dreams projects planned for this year include an air tower at Long Beach (Calif.) Airport and New York City’s Chelsea Piers, where a fully operational tugboat will sport the trademark Soaring Dreams shapes and colors. For more information on past and future Soaring Dreams projects, visit www.soaringdreams.org .

The Soaring Dreams racecar paint schemes and clinics coincide with the drivers' Busch race schedule, which include: Bristol (Edwards), Texas (Kenseth), Phoenix (Martin) and Dover (Biffle).

"[Thursday] we were working with kids that were hand-picked by their teachers, who thought it would be really beneficial for the kids to be part of this," Edwards said. "The whole idea is to let kids who are having a tough time -- physically, mentally, socially -- to be part of a team, to create something big, like the blimp they have covered with their artwork, and our racecar is covered with their artwork."

Last April, more than 5,000 children from after-school programs and hospitals teamed to paint nearly 40,000 sq. ft. of canvas, creating the most remarkable and recognizable blimp in the world, the Ameriquest Soaring Dreams Airship.

"For me, my involvement was to be able to talk to the kids that my dream was to be a racecar driver and lucky enough to do it," Edwards said. "I hope the kids can use [my experience] as a motivator.

"If it weren't for guys like Ken Schrader, Tony Stewart and Rusty Wallace, who went out and made their career based on their hard work and talent, it would have been an easy thing for me to let go of and make excuses and say I can't do this.

"To think that some kid would be inspired by the small accomplishments I've had, that would be awesome."