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NASCAR

Carl Edwards knows dethroning Johnson won't be easy

By SceneDaily.com

Feb 14, 2009

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - Roush Fenway Racing's Carl Edwards is well aware that many media members, and others, have picked him to dethrone Jimmie Johnson as 2009 champion of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series.

Edwards is a realist and understands that he's going to have his hands full when it comes to beating Johnson, who has won three consecutive Cup titles and is the only driver to win three in a row since Cale Yarborough (1976 to 1978).

“That’s great that people are picking us to win this thing, but we’ve got [36 races] before the season’s over," Edwards said. "We’ve got a lot of time to hopefully prove them right, but there’s a lot of opportunity for things to go wrong, I know that, so we’ll just do our best.”

Edwards, the winner of a career-high nine Cup races in 2008, is confident that crew chief Bob Osborne will continue to give him the required setups needed to be equally successful in 2009.

“You know, you try not to mess ourselves up. Bob and the guys worked on a lot of things," Edwards said. "Bob doesn’t tell me all the time what he’s working on, so I hope they’re all good things."

Edwards, who will roll off 16th in tomorrow's Daytona 500 at Daytona International Speedway, isn't hinging his entire season on the season-opening race. But that doesn't mean that he wouldn't like to be the first driver in the organization's history to win the 500, though.

"It’s been said before and it’s been proven that a good race or a bad race here doesn’t portend how your season is going to go, but it would be nice to get a 500 win,” Edwards said.

Edwards also understands that the Daytona 500 isn't just any race on the Sprint Cup schedule. Edwards' first 500 was in 2005 and he learned right away the intensity that comes with competing in what is widely considered to be the Super Bowl of stock-car racing.

“The first Daytona 500 I was in, I would say about halfway through the race, I’m running around and I was thinking, ‘Hey, this is just another race.’ Then I think it was the last restart, 15, 18 laps to go or something like that, and I’m telling you, you could see all the fans go crazy, the drivers all of a sudden where they would give somebody three inches before, they were rubbing against them,” he said.

Edwards' best finish in five career starts in the Daytona 500 came in 2008 in which he finished eighth and earned his first top-10.

"Everyone wants to stand there and say, ‘We won the Daytona 500.’ I just can’t imagine going to sleep Sunday night and being able to say that," Edwards said. "Last year, I put it in my memory bank, after the race, my motorhome was right next to [winnner] Ryan Newman’s and I stayed the night last year, and he got back from all of the victory lane stuff and walked over there, and literally it was like he was walking on a foot of air. I just wanted to stand next to him for a while. He was so pumped up. I want to know what that feels like.”