Now with a different team, five years older and potentially wiser at 37, Edwards has another shot in Sunday’s Ford EcoBoost 400 (2:30 p.m. ET, NBC, MRN, SiriusXM) on the same Homestead-Miami track. He’ll battle with fellow Championship 4 participants Kyle Busch, Jimmie Johnson and Joey Logano with a chance to wash away the sting of 2011.

In the organizational meeting that followed that year’s finale, his Roush Fenway Racing team was introspective. Edwards said that car owner Jack Roush asked the small group what could have been done differently. Edwards recalled that Bob Osborne, his crew chief at the time, replied: “If I had to run it over again I would do the exact same thing. We did the right things and we did the best we could, and if we do that every time we will be fine.”

Edwards took that to heart, his pride in what his team had accomplished reaffirmed. And it was hard to argue — Edwards’ 4.9 average finish in the final 10 races of 2011 remains the record holder for the most consistent Chase performance since the postseason era began in 2004.

Tony Stewart and Carl Edwards ran neck-and-neck during the 2011 Chase, both in the points standings and on the track.

Even then, there were plenty of places where missteps in an eventful day for Stewart & Co. could have altered the course of history:

— The loose part from Kurt Busch‘s broken transmission that lodged itself in the front grille screen of Stewart’s No. 14 Chevrolet, coming perilously close to piercing the radiator. The multiple pit-road visits for repairs cost Stewart plenty of early track position.

— The pit-stop issues and a faulty air wrench that caused Stewart to lose eight positions — twice — over the course of the race.

— The pit-strategy venture by Darian Grubb, Stewart’s crew chief, that was rewarded by a timely rain shower and lengthy caution that allowed his driver to save fuel and gain track position.

— The race’s agonizing third rain delay, which came ever-so-close to washing the remainder of the race away and flagging Edwards as the champion by a mere two points.

For all the misfortune that Stewart endured, he rallied. Remarkably, he made 12 pit stops in a 400-mile race and still won. His five victories in a 10-race Chase remains a series record.

Edwards and his team were unflappable, sticking to their strategy and executing it to near perfection. It still wound up just one position short.

Plenty has happened between that opportunity and this one.

What if …

Edwards’ what-ifs for the 2011 finale lingered longer as some of the sport’s difficult financial realities hit home. In the two days that followed Homestead, Roush Fenway shrank from a four-car operation to three, a move that involved layoffs of nearly 100 employees.

Edwards soldiered through a rare winless season in 2012. Osborne, whom Edwards said was so distraught at losing the previous year’s title that he skipped the Champion’s Week banquet in Las Vegas, was replaced atop his team’s pit box after 19 races. Edwards hasn’t had much continuity since: Dave Rogers, his current crew chief, is his fifth in the last five years.

After the 2014 season, a driver known for his backflip celebrations made one of the biggest leaps of his career, leaving the Roush Fenway and Ford camp and following the path that teammate Matt Kenseth took two years earlier to Joe Gibbs Racing and Toyota. The move has re-established Edwards among the sport’s championship contenders, but would the course of stock-car racing history be any different had Edwards converted on his last title shot?

• For one, Stewart would have been retiring from Sprint Cup competition this year as a two-time champ. As it stands, he’ll go down as the driver who bookended Johnson’s record run of five consecutive crowns with a pair of titles of his own, ending his Hall of Fame career as the only driver to win championships under the Winston Cup, Nextel Cup and Sprint Cup names.

• Edwards’ credentials for his own inclusion in the NASCAR Hall of Fame — regardless of this Sunday’s outcome — would have also received an undisputed boost. Only four drivers (former or current) without a championship are ahead of him on the series’ all-time win list. Three of them — Junior Johnson, Mark Martin and Fireball Roberts — have been chosen for enshrinement, with Denny Hamlin (29 career wins to Edwards’ 28) still competing and building his own Hall of Fame resume. Fred Lorenzen, behind Edwards with 26 career wins and no titles, was inducted in the NASCAR Hall’s Class of 2015. Championship or not, Edwards remains worthy of nomination and induction with room for his career accomplishments to grow — but the story would have been altered with a 2011 title.

The championship loss was felt throughout the entire No. 99 team, and still echoes today.

• Had Roush Fenway added a championship banner to its race shop, would the team’s fortunes be different? UPS had already made the decision to withdraw its sponsorship at year’s end, so an Edwards title would not have saved its fourth team. Had Edwards stayed with the team after winning a theoretical 2011 title, his star power as an expert pitchman might have helped other sponsors stay in the fold as well, or served to recruit teammates. Edwards scored the organization’s most recent win in the summer of 2014. Nearly two and a half years later, the team is still rebuilding.

• And what of Joe Gibbs Racing, which grew from a three-team operation to the sport’s mandated four-team maximum with Edwards’ arrival? The Gibbs operation was already a NASCAR powerhouse before Edwards signed on, but the expansion added depth to match the performance. That aspect has paid off — Edwards and Busch are the only teammates to qualify for the Championship 4 in the same year since the current postseason format was introduced in 2014.

Regardless of the what-ifs or whether Edwards or Stewart had won back then, the 2011 finale almost certainly shaped the mold for how current-day championships are decided. The winner-take-all format for Homestead owes its roots to the compelling Edwards-Stewart battle, with the provisional title changing hands multiple times that day with each shift in track position.

Homestead reunion

Edwards returned to Homestead-Miami Speedway last month, participating for JGR in the last organizational test of the season. At that point, the driver was still alive in the Chase but hadn’t yet punched his ticket to NASCAR’s final four.

When he met with the media during a break in testing, he shared the table on stage with the Sprint Cup trophy, which was presumably making its own test run for this weekend.

“Yeah, I don’t know if this is nice of you to put this trophy up here,” said Edwards, clearly impressed. “I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but it’s working. I’ve got my emotions all wound up.”

He won’t lack for motivation in Sunday’s season-ender. After clinching his berth in the final with a victory two weeks ago at Texas Motor Speedway, Edwards is relishing his second chance at a spot on the championship stage.

But Edwards’ opportunity to rewrite history will coincide with a memorable farewell to Stewart, whose career will be forever linked with his through their 2011 title clash. Five years removed from the drama and distress, Edwards can look back on that day with a new, much fonder perspective.

“That was the most fun championship battle I’ve been in,” Edwards said last month at the South Florida track. “Those last few weeks, people around me said, ‘Man, that’s the happiest I’ve ever seen you.’ It was so neat to be racing that hard for a championship with a guy like Tony Stewart, a guy who’s one of the best drivers on earth. That race, that whole weekend was really fun — all that pressure, and it seemed like everything we did mattered. Everything was important, every lap.”

An early exit for Stewart in the Chase’s opening round will prevent the two from reprising their spirited campaign from five years ago. It didn’t stop Edwards from thinking, “What if?”

“I was really hoping Tony would be in the Chase and we’d get to battle it out again. That would be really cool,” Edwards said. “But looking back on it, that’s the kind of thing I’d like to be a part of again.

“I’d like to have a battle like that here in a few weeks. That’s as good as it gets.”