HOMESTEAD, Fla. -- An argument could be made that Chase for the Sprint Cup championship leader Carl Edwards and his sole rival Tony Stewart had sparred to a verbal standoff prior to any on-track action at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

On Saturday, it was time to do it on the race track, and based on the numbers alone in two Saturday practices at the 1.5-mile progressively-banked oval, Edwards might seem a slight favorite in Sunday's championship-determining Ford 400.

Edwards put an exclamation on that thought by winning his third pole position this season in his No. 99 Roush Fenway Racing Ford while Stewart slotted his No. 14 Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet into 15th.

Comparing the two championship contenders' practice performance -- Edwards comes into Sunday's 36th event this season three points ahead of Stewart -- Edwards had the fastest single lap, a 31.272-second effort, an average of 172.678 mph, in the opening 90-minute practice compared to Stewart's 31.533 / 171.249.

But on average, Stewart compared very favorably to Edwards. In Practice 1, Stewart averaged a 32.26-second lap for the 30 laps he ran, to Edwards' 32.45-second average over 49 laps, which Edwards said were entirely in race trim.

And Stewart sees himself at no disadvantage.

"You [media] need to look at the time sheets -- [Edwards] put up a fast lap," Stewart said. "His lap times fell off pretty hard, in the one long run that he did. And looking at that, that's why I'm still really confident that what we did [Saturday] was the right thing. Our times don't fall off as hard as his did.

"Whether they've got something figured out for [Sunday] that they didn't show -- who knows? After looking at the time sheet I felt a lot better about what I was seeing. But to look at that sheet it doesn't tell the story of the [final] session [because] I felt like the two best cars were [Dale Earnhardt Jr.] and [Kasey Kahne]. They were 22nd and 26th and we were sitting there 24th.

"The guys I think we're going to watch for the race win [Sunday] are the guys that were back there in the same general vicinity where I was at, looking at the times that were consistently the best in that second session. I don't think looking at the time sheets tell the accurate story of what's coming up [Sunday]."

Stewart said he was particularly impressed at how his team performed with only a half-hour between the two sessions, "then getting a lot of changes made and getting a database for [Sunday]. And I think that by running a lot of laps in each run, I was happy with what I had."

Dale Earnhardt Jr., who posted the fastest single lap in Practice 1 (31.179 / 173.193) also had the fastest 10-lap average, 168.517 mph. Edwards was second-best at 168.115 mph while Stewart was a whisker behind Edwards at 168.018 mph. All three drivers set their best average on their first 10-lap run of the practice.

"It was hard to tell from practice how big a battle you're going to have," Edwards said. "Our car was balanced well, qualifying trim was balanced well, so no hiccups yet, so that's nice."

"We spent a lot of time [Saturday] working on just the race setup," Stewart said. "I feel like we spent the time that we had [Saturday] morning -- and I'm appreciative of NASCAR redoing the schedule to get us all the practice that we all got, considering what's on the line this weekend. I think we're going to be all right -- we just have to sit [Saturday] night and wait 'til [Sunday]."

Edwards won Ford 400s in 2008 and 2010 but said he was at a loss to compare Saturday's car to either of those.

"I don't remember practice well in those races," Edwards said. "But Bob [Osborne, crew chief] is a real honest guy and I said, 'Hey, how's it look?' And he said, 'It looks fine, looks good.'

"And if he says that, we're competitive. I mean, you never know what's going to happen in the race, but like I said, we don't have a big issue or anything that we're working with right now and that's pretty good."

"This place changes so much from year to year anyway it's kind of hard to compare 'em," Stewart said. "But I think [Saturday] the good news is every time we made a change, it responded in some way and that's a really good sign. It's hard when you make changes to the car and it just doesn't react to anything -- that's when you get nervous.

"Darian and I have already talked since qualifying and we have a game plan for [Sunday]. We can really go back and look at the practice that we had and say 'this worked and this didn't.' It gives us all a direction of what we have to do for [Sunday]. We have a pretty good feeling about the car that we've got. It's just a matter of seeing where it ends up."

In Happy Hour, Edwards had the fastest lap on a mock qualifying run, his third and final lap of the session. A tire issue on his first run caused Edwards and Osborne to nix the idea of any further practice.

"We had two sets of stickers and we were going to make three or four mock runs in the last practice," Edwards said. "You want to make your last run on sticker [new] tires. We made the first run and had a big cut in the right rear tire. So Bob let me look at it and make the decision, and I told him I didn't want to run on that tire.

"So we put the last set of stickers on and made one more run. We said, 'Hey, it feels pretty good, so let's not out-think ourselves.' So it turned into an easy practice -- a low number of laps -- but that wasn't our plan. If it wasn't for that cut tire, we would've made one more run, at least."

"I didn't know until after second practice was over and I looked at the time sheets," Stewart said of he and Edwards' different Happy Hour philosophies. "I didn't realize they didn't do any race runs. They'll either look like geniuses for doing it, or not. You look at how many laps we ran, we spent a lot of time trying to find out what the combination was for race trim. So we've gotten the one-lap deal out of the way, now we have to worry about the 400 miles."

One thing neither driver could control is the time the two practices were held compared to when they were scheduled Friday -- when rain caused both sessions, set for 3 and 6:05 p.m. ET, to be postponed to Saturday -- with the race scheduled to begin at 3 p.m. and end in cooler temperatures around dusk.

"There's a little bit of concern," Edwards said. "But those [Cup crew] guys are going to pay real close attention to the Nationwide race [Saturday] night -- Bob and all the engineers -- and everybody kind of knows what's going to happen, everybody has pretty good theories.

"So I don't think it'll be a huge surprise. We're prepared for it, I think."

On the verge of what's undoubtedly the biggest race of his seven-year Cup Series career, Edwards said he truly had no concern over any psyche-jobs anyone might be attempting to put in place.

"I haven't read one piece of media or talked to anybody about that for a week," Edwards said. "That doesn't do me any good. I'm just going in and racing, and at the end of the day, really, this is just racing.

"Whatever happens out there is going to happen and all the worrying, talking, wondering -- all that stuff -- isn't going to make me faster, it can only make me slower so I'm just going to go and do my job."

Stewart didn't miss a chance to keep it up.

"After sitting in the media deal [Thursday] I was kind of having fun talking with [Edwards]," Stewart said, grinning broadly. "He's like an easy target, like bringing a knife to a gun fight in that battle. But we get to do what we do for a living [Sunday], so it's nice that 30 hours from now we're going to know how it all played out.

"Like I said, [Edwards] is a fun guy to pick at, but he's a good race car driver and that's what we're going to get to face [Sunday]."

Edwards, while sitting in the Nationwide Series drivers' meeting, said he did find out one thing in his 52 laps of practice.

"The Cup race is going to be tough," Edwards said. "It's going to be interesting [because] a lot of guys are about the same speed."

Three-tenths of a second separated the top-six drivers on 10-lap averages in Happy Hour, led by Jeff Gordon's 166.611 mph effort. Stewart had the ninth-best 10-lap average in Happy Hour at 166.255 mph.

Edwards is in position to win the Nationwide owners' championship for Roush Fenway Racing, which trails Joe Gibbs Racing's No. 18 by a single point going into the season-finale Ford 300. But even more important, he's looking to gain experience that will help him and his team in Sunday's critical event.

"It's important and it's neat because it's kind of a little bit of practice for [Sunday]," Edwards said. "It lets me go through all the motions -- the emotions and the motions -- of competing against the best guys out there and it's a good practice run for us."

Related:
Edwards sends message with Homestead pole
Qualifying the Chasers: Homestead-Miami
Osborne, Grubb find themselves in the spotlight
Caraviello: The burden, and benefit, of having been there before
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