Conversation: C. Edwards (cont'd)

Q: What was your overall impression of the Race of Champions?

Edwards: It was very well-organized and cool to be a part of. There were so many guys there that to me were just world-class drivers, there were a ton of fans there and it was all just first-class. I hope I get to go back again.

Unforgettable

Carl Edwards gained some international racing respect at the 21st annual Race of Champions in London and it made a career moment for Edwards as well.

• Complete story, click here
• Audio: In England for the RoC
• Audio: Close, but no cigar

Q: How much interaction did you have with the other racers, and who made the biggest impression on you?

Edwards: We had a lot of interaction. There were a couple guys I really enjoyed talking to, like Troy Bayliss, the motorcycle racer, was really cool. Tanner Foust, the other American that went and I got to hang out after the race. We went to dinner and then they had a party and he is a really cool guy -- a class act and a real professional, so I'm a fan of his.

A lot of the Formula One guys were really neat. Jenson Button was a real fun guy and I enjoyed talking to him.

David Coulthard was one of the guys that made the biggest impression on me. In the little amount of time I had to talk to him, he kind of reminded me of Mark Martin. [Coulthard] just seemed like a guy who took racing for what it was -- he enjoyed the racing but he had his wife and his new kid there and it just seemed like he was having a good time. It was cool to see a guy who was that big of a name and who had achieved so much to have that much fun.

Mattias Ekstrom, the [Swedish] touring car driver was by far the wildest guy there -- a hilarious guy and the full-on entertainment for the weekend. I think him and Jimmie Johnson got to spend a lot of time together, too. But Mattias wants to drive in NASCAR competition really badly, so we talked a lot about NASCAR and things he could do to come experiment over in the United States. I think he's a guy who could do it for sure -- at least he wants to, extremely badly so it was fun to talk to him about that.

One of the most eye-opening things for me was I got to ride in a car with [RoC winner] Sebastien Loeb and I'm telling you something -- that guy can drive a race car. The only other guy I've driven with that made me kind of pucker like that was Boris Said, when I rode in the two-seater with him at VIR [Virginia International Raceway]. But [riding with Loeb on a wet track in a KTM X-Bow] was a neat experience -- he has amazing car control.

After I rode with him I thought 'now I've got something to work towards -- I know what I need to be doing' and it was cool.

Q: You beat your trainer's hero, Michael Schumacher, in a head-to-head race in Abarth rally cars; and Schumacher spoke well of you afterward. What was that all like?

Edwards: [Beating Schumacher] meant a lot to me. I don't know if it should or not, but it did. I was not necessarily a Michael Schumacher fan because I didn't watch a lot of Formula One when he was racing, but my trainer, Dean -- who was with me -- is a huge Michael Schumacher fan so I hear a lot about him.

When they told me I was going, they said they'd do their best to get me in a race with Schumacher, and Dean was so excited it got me excited. We got through our first races and I thought 'here's my chance -- I get to see where I really stack up.'

The neatest part, that I'll never forget, is when we rolled out from under the grandstands, to where you are before you get on the track. I was going back and forth really hard, warming up my tires, and I could see Michael look in his mirror and he started going back and forth, doing burnouts as we warmed up our tires and brakes.

I didn't give him a lot of room -- I kind of forced him to have less room, so we're back there playing mind games with each other. We both wanted to win pretty badly. Then we got out there and got to racing and just to be able to beat him -- I don't know if he missed a shift and he didn't get as much practice in that car as I did. But just to see how excited Dean was, was cool.

That [Abarth] was fun to drive, really small but it had a ton of power; and it was front-wheel-drive so it was really different to drive. The head-to-head format was fun. You could tell where you were in relation to the other guy and whether you needed to pick it up or not. As much as I tried not to do that, you did it -- and I even looked across the track and up at the scoreboard and you could see if the other guy had wrecked.

Other than that, you just drove hard and the track was so tight you didn't really have a chance to look at much. (Continued)