Edwards to capitalize on final races with RFR

Crew chief Jimmy Fennig, whose presence in the garage can be traced back to the early 1980s, will step down off the pit box.

And while the No. 99 team has produced a pair of victories this season (at Bristol and Sonoma), the speed to contend for wins on a regular basis hasn’t been there.

And yet with the Chase for the Sprint Cup entering the Eliminator round this weekend at Martinsville Speedway, Edwards and his team remain one of eight still in contention for the series championship.

Can a lame duck driver win NASCAR’s top title?

Well, a lame duck crew chief can, as Darian Grubb proved when he helped guide Tony Stewart to the championship in 2011, knowing all along that he would be replaced at season’s end.

The team Stewart and Grubb defeated for the title was none other than Edwards’ own No. 99 group.

Edwards isn’t being replaced. He’s off to JGR of his own accord. The possibility that his title hopes ended the day he announced his intentions was real. But so, too, was the opportunity to go out swinging.

“Let’s be honest, we have not been a dominant team,” Edwards said earlier this week. “We have struggled for speed. We had a couple of opportunities to really flounder and fail. And that was number one, when I announced I was leaving. Jack (Roush, co-owner of RFR) could have broken up the team, could have lost all hope and we didn’t. I feel like we’ve actually become stronger in our quest for this championship.

“The second thing, lacking some speed we could have gone to some of these race tracks, tried too hard and made big mistakes. We didn’t do that.”

Edwards managed to advance out of the first three-race segment of the Chase in spite of finishing outside the top 10 at Chicago, New Hampshire and Dover. His team was the perfect example of average, but at that time average proved to be good enough.

The bonus came in the most recent round, where finishes of fifth and eighth at Charlotte were more than enough to offset a 21st-place run at Talladega.

Better than average, perhaps, but still not where he or the team need to be to make it through one more round and a shot at the title later next month.

Edwards admits that he was “nervous about the first three races” and not sure what to expect when round No. 2 rolled around.

“I was surprised that we ran as well as we did at Kansas and as well as we did at Charlotte,” he said. “I mean our group came together and did an amazing job.

“It’s kind of like we’ve found our groove here and we feel like we know what we need to do and if we continue to do things the way we’ve been doing them … I feel more confident about making it to the next round to Homestead than I did about either of the first two rounds.

“For me, that’s where my head’s at and I think my whole team feels the same way. If we don’t make it to Homestead, I will be a little bit shocked. I will definitely be disappointed.”

Only three of the eight remaining drivers have previously won championships: Jeff Gordon, Brad Keselowski and Matt Kenseth. Others still in the mix have been close.

Kevin Harvick has finished third in three of the last four Chase battles; Denny Hamlin went down to the wire in 2010 only to lose a 15-point lead, and the title, in the season’s final race.

Edwards says the loss to Stewart in ’11 “made me stronger.”

“You never really know how you’re going to respond to all that pressure and I think the battle with Tony (Stewart) that really made me … understand what that’s about,” he said.

“To go through it from start to finish and to watch how everyone around responded, the different mistakes people made, some people step it up and some people had problems. I think all that experience helps me.

His is “the perfect group,” he said, to “battle it out no matter how intense the spotlight or the pressure gets.

“So I look forward to that, I feel like that’s where we have a little bit of an edge on a couple of these guys.”

It may be a slight edge, but at this point in the season a team will take any advantage it can get.

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