Truck owner gave Edwards the opportunity of lifetime (cont'd)

"Carl got in, and instantly ran as fast as Tony did," Mittler remembered. "Instantly. Tony was standing right next to me, he turned and said, 'I guess I'd better get back in that thing and hustle a little harder, or I'm going to lose my ride.' We kind of laughed. That's really a great memory I have of Tony."

Roper was killed in a Truck race crash at Texas Motor Speedway in 2000. Mittler turned to Larry Gunselman, but accidents and a lack of sponsorship took a toll on the relationship. Finally, after a 30th-place finish at Gateway International Raceway, his hometown track, Mittler had seen enough. The Tuesday after the race, he called Edwards and told him that he'd be driving the truck in the team's next scheduled race, at Memphis Motorsports Park. Edwards was so excited, Mittler remembers, the driver started jumping up and down on his bed like a kid on Christmas morning. By then, Mittler knew Edwards was ready to make the leap.

"When people say, what makes Carl unique, No. 1, he is at least genius mentality in my mind," Mittler said. "He might be at least genius IQ. I really believe that. He is incredibly, incredibly smart. And even then, he was in very, very good physical condition. He was mentally and physically prepared to do the job. I have never seen that guy drink anything but water. We'd get on the road and we'd stop in at pit stop or something to get fuel, and I'd get a Coke and a candy bar or whatever, and Carl would get a water and a granola bar. I used to shake my head. But he had the vision. He clearly knew what that vision was, and he was going to accomplish it."

Soon after Edwards slipped into Mittler's race truck, that vision started to become reality. Memphis brought a 23rd-place finish, but Edwards had been 14th-fastest in final practice. Then it was onto Milwaukee, and a 28th-place result. It all came together at Kansas, Edwards' home track, where he started 14th and never ran any lower. It was something of a stunning result, recorded by a relatively unheralded former dirt-track driver running for a part-time team, and it turned heads. The eighth-place finish "was a victory," Edwards remembered. "That was a huge, huge day for all of us."

"We didn't just luck into it," Mittler added. "It wasn't a race where everybody wrecked. We raced our way to eighth place. The following weekend we went to Kentucky, and by then we really had a lot of notoriety. People were blown away that we could do that. I told [Truck Series director] Wayne Auton, 'Let me tell you something. This kid is a Winston Cup champion. This kid is a phenom. He is one in a million.'

"Of course everybody thought, 'Ah, Mike's smoking crack.' I told them, 'If I had the money, I'd go get a Cup car right now, and we'd go back to Kansas this fall. He could run this Cup race. That's how good he is.' They all shook their heads. Obviously, my crystal ball was pretty clear about the ability that he had. You just knew that he had it. And you just knew by working with him, by looking at the intensity in his eyes and his face, and you knew by his ability."

Other people were noticing Edwards' ability, too. Edwards was impressive in both a Daytona test for the 2003 Truck season and a private Ford test at Talladega Superspeedway, and began receiving telephone calls from Max Jones, a former Roush executive who is now co-owner of Yates Racing. The Roush team pursued Edwards like a major-college football program going after a five-star quarterback, flying him up to their headquarters outside Detroit and showing off their new race shop near the airport in Concord, N.C. For Edwards, who felt both a debt of gratitude and an obligation to Mittler, it wasn't the snap decision it might have seemed. But Roush could provide so much that Mittler couldn't. When the call with the offer finally came, as Edwards was preparing what was to be his 2003 race truck, he gave in.

Edwards walked out of the race shop and up a hill to Mittler's office, brimming with trepidation the whole way. "I fully expected him to ask me, to try to force me to stay there and drive his truck, because we put so much into it," Edwards said Friday at Kansas Speedway. "He stood up, smiled, he was as happy as I was. He shook my hand and said, anything I can do to help you, but you've got to go. That was cool. He put himself and what he needed aside for me."

Mittler remembers that meeting in his office as well. "I just looked at him and said, 'You got the call, didn't you?' He kind of looked at me and said, 'How do you know?' I said, 'I can just tell.' I could read his emotions, I could read his intensity," Mittler said. "I said, 'Are you going to take it?' He said, 'I don't think so.' I sat him down, closed the door to my office and pounded my fist on the desk. I said, 'You have to take it, man. You have to take it. That man can do for you what nobody else can. Certainly, I can't do it. With a truck, a Busch car and Cup car, that's the opportunity of a lifetime. That's what you've been working for. Take it.'"

So Edwards took it. Roush faxed the contract to Mittler's office, and soon afterward Edwards' career took off. He ran the full 2003 Truck campaign for Roush, winning three times. He made his Cup debut in 2004. Now, he's the Sprint Cup championship leader with seven races remaining. For Mittler, it was a bittersweet parting. He knew Edwards had to move on to achieve bigger things. But at the same time, he didn't want to lose him.

"I was fit to be tied, because I had spent a lot of money on him by then," Mittler said. "It was a bittersweet deal for me. My wife was really upset. She's let me do everything I wanted to do in racing, never a question asked, but she was really, really upset, because she knew we had spent a lot of our own money doing it. But hey, you know the rest of the story."

Mittler is still fielding his Truck team, still running a partial schedule because of the exorbitant expense of going full time, still looking for the next Carl Edwards. He's high on his current driver, Jack Smith, a short-track veteran who's competed in three Truck events this season. And he still keeps in touch with Edwards, swelling with pride when his old driver thanked him on live television after winning at Michigan, calling him every now and then to ask for some help with his Truck team. It's a bit more difficult to get him on the phone these days, Mittler admits. But Edwards still comes through.

"I called him a few weeks ago before the Gateway race," Mittler said. "I didn't talk to him, I left a message saying, 'I need some help, can you help me out a little bit with information?' Sure enough, he arranged for the right people to call me. I still haven't spoken to him, but he arranged for the right people to call me and got me some good technical help. It was a very beneficial phone call. I have a lot of respect for him. He learned from me, and I've always told people that I learned from Carl, also. I learned to just stick your hand out and say, 'Hi, I'm Mike Mittler, nice to meet you.' I really did learn that, even though I'm plenty old enough to be his dad."

It's the least Edwards can do. "If it weren't for Mike Mittler," he said, "I definitely wouldn't be standing here, that's for sure."