Carl Edwards: Dover 'is going to be insane'

Posted on September 23, 2014 by Staff Report

Monster Mile will be ‘double the pressure’ of Loudon

Team Penske and Roush Fenway Racing tested Texas Motor Speedway on Monday and Tuesday. While Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano have advanced to the Contender Round in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup, Greg Biffle and Carl Edwards are focused on racing their way into the top 12 at Dover International Speedway in the AAA 400 (Sunday, 2 p.m. ET, ESPN).

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"This race is going to be insane, I mean Loudon, you saw how pressure-packed it was and how many folks were pushing it and making mistakes," Edwards said. "At Dover, I mean you add about 30 to 40 miles-an-hour, a bunch of banking and double the pressure, it’s going to crazy.

"So we have discussed it, we know what we have to do. We just have to go there and get every spot that we can."

With 15 wins across NASCAR’s national series at concrete tracks Dover, Bristol Motor Speedway and Nashville Superspeedway, Edwards looks forward to returning to the Monster Mile for the final race in the Challenger Round.

"Dover is a great place," Edwards said. "People have called me a lot of things, but they actually called me ‘Concrete Carl’ for a while because we won a bunch of races on the concrete tracks including Dover.

"So for me, I like the way it races, I like the sensation of speed and we just have to hope that we hit everything just right."

In his final season with Roush Fenway Racing, Edwards said the team didn’t want to get ahead of itself by testing Texas, a track that is two rounds away in the Chase, but the team can glean information that will help it this weekend in Delaware.

"It’s kind of a risk because this race is obviously not for a while, and we’ve got other things to focus on, but we do feel like things that we find here at Texas could apply at Dover, Kansas, Charlotte, all the mile-and-a-halfs," Edwards said.

Sitting six points behind the 12th and final spot in the Contender Round, Biffle said the Texas test is important to improve the organization’s recent performance, and he hopes to survive and advance at the Monster Mile.

"We have not been running the way we need to at Chicago and Loudon," Biffle said. "Of course that is why we are here at Texas testing, trying to figure out some things with our cars and speed.

"It’s going to be about the same thing for us at Dover, it’s going to be about survival."

Edwards agreed and expects the same competitive beating and banging that was on display last weekend at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.

"…this is it, I mean it’s basically your championship and you know if you make a mistake, or you don’t do something that you should have, you don’t want to be thinking about that for the next seven weeks and the whole offseason so this, this is important for us," Edwards said.

Tickets are still available for the AAA Texas 500 (3 p.m. ET, Sunday, Nov. 2, ESPN) — part of the Eliminator round of the 10-race Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup — by calling the Texas Motor Speedway ticket office at (817) 215-8500 or by visiting www.texasmotorspeedway.com.

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Posted on September 23, 2014 by Staff Report

Earnhardt reflects on ninth-place at Loudon, looks forward to Dover

Count Dale Earnhardt Jr. as one that appreciates the new Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup format.  

"This Chase, I’m telling you, this thing is intense," Earnhardt said on "The Dale Jr. Download" as part of Dirty Mo Radio.  

He later added, "I think these rounds are harder than I anticipated."

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A good portion of drivers in the Chase found some sort of trouble in the Sylvania 300 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. Junior had some issues but was able to overcome them for a ninth-place finish. A loose wheel brought Junior back to pit road on Lap 123 and left him a lap down. On the download, the three-time 2014 winner took us through a driver’s mindset when that happens.  

"You’re going to have loose wheels, you just are. That’s going to happen. Those guys are working their guts out," he said. "They have those air wrenches tuned to do the job as fast as they can and try to cut some time off of the overall stop. In talking to my right front changer, I think that also opens the window for those kind of things to happen so there’s a balance there between having a gun that can do the job quickly but also being able to get those things tight every time and being consistent on that. I wasn’t too worried about it. I’ve had loose wheels before. You just gotta understand that the wheel’s going to come off eventually. So you need to get your butt on pit road as fast as you can because you can’t run well or run in the top 10 if you back it in the wall. You just come down pit road, you’re going to lose a little time. Steve (Letarte) was smart to put four tires on it because we were going to lose a lap anyways."

  The No. 88 team battled back and got the beneficiary of the free pass on Lap 189.

  "We were patient, we got our (free pass) eventually, it was a little bit late in the race when we got it, but we were able to pass a lot of guys on restarts. Not every restart is going to be awesome but we were able to make a lot of ground up on restarts," he said.

Earnhardt recorded 29 quality passes, the third-most in the race, according to loop data. A late restart on the inside hindered Junior’s chances for a top-five finish, but overall Junior seemed happy to avoid a big issue that affected other Chase drivers.  

"After everything that happened, after everything we went through, we dodged a big bullet."

 The attention now shifts to the final race of the Challenger Round, the AAA 400 at Dover International Speedway (2 p.m. ET, Sunday, ESPN). In 29 starts at the Monster Mile, Earnhardt has one win, six top-five finishes, 11 top-10 finishes and a pole, which he earned last fall. In the past five races at the 1-mile track, he has finished no worse than 11th place.  

Junior enters Dover in sixth place in the standings with a 28-point cushion to move on to the Contender Round, a fact not lost on the Hendrick Motorsports driver.  

"We are going in with a little bit of a cushion, 28 points. If we give up 28 points and don’t make the next round, with that kind of finish, I don’t know that we deserve to go any further. But that’s not what we’re going to worry about. We got a good cushion and that makes the whole weekend a lot easier. And we’ll try to get on through this round. Try to go out there and win the race. We get to move on to some tracks that I think we have a better shot at to be more competitive at and we’ll try to continue to improve on consistency. We’ve had some good speed so we just got to get the results to match with the way the car’s been running.  

"Hopefully we can avoid all the nonsense. We love to win races and we’re going out there to try and win races. Trust me, I want to finish as high as I can. We’re working every lap trying to pass cars but as long as we’re in that last round with a shot, that’s all that matters."

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