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BRISTOL, Tenn. -- When your teammate wins the last two consecutive NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races like Kyle Busch has, you'd think the spotlight would be off you. But that wasn't the case for Carl Edwards on Friday at Bristol Motor Speedway. The No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing driver arrived at the short track seeking his first win of 2016, as well as his fourth career victory at "The Last Colosseum."
"This place has been really good to me," Edwards said. "I feel like our vantage on pit road will pay off here. Hopefully the speed we have in qualifying trim will pay off and with my experience here hopefully we'll get a win."
In his last four Cup starts at Bristol, the 36-year-old has earned himself the highest driver rating (109.9) of all Sprint Cup Series drivers at the half-miler, with his most recent win coming in 2014's spring race. This season, however, Edwards has come up short, earning three top-five and six top-10 finishes in seven races. So while he's still winless, Edwards is utilizing his teammate's accomplishments and building off of them.
"The good thing about Kyle's success right now is I'm on his team and I can talk to him about it," Edwards said. "But everyone does things differently. But I think the coolest part for me is to see like, 'Hey, this can be done right now out of this shop, with these cars, these engines' and that's the best thing you can have, is someone out there setting the bar."
Knowing that JGR has the ability to win back-to-back gives Edwards confidence, and being able to compare notes also gives him insight.
"We're able to go back and look at the entire weekend and kind of compare what we did to the 18 and if we see things that are outstanding, obviously we change them, but if there's things that aren't clear we can go talk to them, and that's really the advantage to having a teammate like that."