Season preview: Carl Edwards

MORE: Edwards discusses new team, Daytona with 120Sports.com

Strides: Edwards placed his name among the first drivers to clinch a berth in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup playoffs, winning the fourth race of the season on a rainy day — and night — at Bristol Motor Speedway in March. It marked his first victory in the Tennessee track’s springtime race and his first on the .533-mile oval since 2008.

But Edwards also filled a void on his Sprint Cup resume at Sonoma Raceway in June with his first road course win in NASCAR’s premier series. The triumph came even as rumors began to circulate about his impending departure from Roush Fenway Racing, speculation that was confirmed just a month later.

Even with lame-duck status at the Jack Roush-owned team, Edwards pressed on, making it to the Eliminator 8 round of the Chase before watching the team’s championship hopes expire at Phoenix International Raceway in the final cut before the season finale.

“The highlights of the season were definitely Bristol and Sonoma — Sonoma, in particular,” Edwards said. “It was a great win, was really proud of it, and then our performance in the Chase, I thought we did a great job there.”

Setbacks: Despite of the pair of wins and the solid run into the new-look Chase’s latter stages, Edwards’ No. 99 suffered from a lack of oomph at tracks that used to be the team’s sweet spot. The team endured erratic performances at intermediate-sized tracks, and the best Edwards and Co. could muster at Michigan International Speedway — formerly a stronghold for car owner Jack Roush — was an uncharacteristic pair of 23rd-place efforts.

Though Edwards was able to survive two eliminations by avoiding major mistakes in the postseason, he registered just one top-five finish in the Chase — a fifth-place in the Contender Round opener at Kansas Speedway.

“The last few weeks were really tough, to be honest with you,” Edwards said. “They’re tough for a couple of reasons, but competitively we didn’t have the speed that we needed and so for us to just keep digging down and making something out of those races, that was an amazing performance. My pit crew was basically flawless, (crew chief) Jimmy Fennig made perfect calls, I felt like I did a really good job, and at the end we just weren’t fast enough. We weren’t fast enough at Phoenix and that’s the way it goes.”

Quoteworthy: “I’m very excited about what’s coming, but I’m very proud of what we’ve done. In some ways, I feel like I’m stepping off of a ledge and I don’t know what’s down there. We haven’t done anything yet in 2015. I know we have a lot of expectations and a lot of hopes, and now we’ve just got to do it.”

What’s next: The biggest bombshell in the “silly season” of driver shifts came in August with Edwards’ introduction as a Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota driver for the 2015 season, changing gears after a 12-year association with Roush and Ford. When asked whether Gibbs’ expansion with a start-from-scratch fourth team might dilute his performance, Edwards was quick to point out that the start-up nature of Stewart-Haas Racing‘s No. 4 team didn’t seem to hamper Kevin Harvick‘s march to his first Sprint Cup championship.

Edwards learned in December that he’ll work with veteran crew chief Darian Grubb next year as part of a sweeping overhaul of JGR’s competition personnel. He’ll also have new teammates in Kyle Busch, Denny Hamlin and Matt Kenseth, the latter of which was a former stablemate of his with Roush Fenway.

Shortly after NASCAR Champion’s Week in Las Vegas, Edwards took the opportunity to participate in a Goodyear tire test at Charlotte Motor Speedway in an effort to become more familiar with his new team and manufacturer in light of NASCAR’s ban on testing in 2015. Though he’s short on experience with the Gibbs operation, Edwards said the alignment of new factors in the offseason has him setting lofty aspirations — a Sprint Cup championship or else.

“There is no other goal,” Edwards said. “I know that personally, I’ve never been a better driver, I feel like the people I have around me couldn’t be better, and I feel like we should go win the championship. That’s our goal. That’s what we plan on doing.”