Edwards hopes Darlington a step to better things

DARLINGTON, S.C. -- For Carl Edwards, the 2010 season is definitely a case of looking things as either a glass half-full or a glass half-empty.

Edwards is 11th in the points heading into Saturday night's Showtime Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway, but his fifth-place finish at Richmond was his first top-five of the season -- and even more telling, the two laps he led were the first he had been out front all year. And to top it off, a Ford hasn't visited Victory Lane in any of NASCAR's three national series.

"That's not good," Edwards said. "We've got to be better than that. If you look at last week, we ran fifth and I think the next Ford was 12th or 13th, so if [crew chief Bob Osborne] and I hadn't hit what we hit on, that would have been another pretty bad run for us.

"... Last week was the closest I'd been. When they dropped the green flag, we passed something like 20 cars the first two runs and we've got to run like that every week. I would say we're better, but it's still gonna take some work."

Just like last week, when the No. 99 was stubbornly slow right off the hauler, Edwards and Osborne find themselves at the bottom looking up at Darlington. Of the 46 cars which posted speeds in Friday's final practice session, Edwards was 45th.

"Considering how last week went in practice, we were about 42nd or something on the sheet the whole practice and Bob really got things turned around and we had our best run ever at Richmond, so I've got a lot of faith and got my fingers crossed that Bob will turn this thing around," Edwards said. "I love racing here. Last week was such a good run. It felt good. We passed a ton of cars and we were strong on pit road and strong on restarts and got a top five. I just couldn't be happier about coming here to Darlington. This is one of the most fun race tracks we run."

"Fun" might not be the adjective used by several other teams in the Cup garage. At least seven backup cars were rolled out after incidents marred both of Friday's sessions. In the first, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Scott Speed and Clint Bowyer whacked the wall. In the second, Roush Fenway teammate Greg Biffle, Casey Mears, Joe Nemechek and Marcos Ambrose suffered significant damage to their primary cars. In addition, the cars of Joey Logano and Kyle Busch had extensive damage. (Continued)