Carl Edwards scored just one win in 2011. (Photo: Getty Images)
In the bubbling excitement of the moment, no one guessed that a rather wicked trend had started as Carl Edwards followed Trevor Bayne to the finish line in last year’s Daytona 500.
Edwards finished second – by .118 of a second. In the tandem-drafting scenario that defined the 500, he didn’t attempt a serious last-second charge to pass Bayne.
That moment would serve as a strange forerunner for what for Edwards was otherwise a spectacular season.
He would go on to finish second at Bristol and Darlington in the opening months of the season and at Richmond in the final race before the start of the Chase. Then, oddly, he closed the season with three consecutive seconds – at Texas and Phoenix and in the tense season finale at Homestead.
And, of course, he was second to Tony Stewart in the championship race, thanks to a tiebreaker win by Stewart, who had more seasonal victories (five to one, Edwards winning only at Las Vegas in the season’s third race).
“Finishing second is no good,” Edwards said. “I learned that early on (in his career). Racing second is the worst.”
This is a difficult position for Edwards. He had a grand season – one many drivers would sell their grandmothers to achieve. Yet he found himself having to be pleased with second too many times, including in the Daytona 500, when, like thousands of other people, he was pleased to see a young upstart like Bayne score a popular upset victory.
Splendid finishes – 26 top 10s in 36 races – carried Edwards to the brink of his first Sprint Cup championship, but, ultimately, those weren’t good enough to overturn Stewart’s hard charge through the Chase.
“It’s not like we had an off day where we said we really screwed up,” Edwards said. “We were on it. … I feel like we kept our heads in it until the checkered flag at Homestead, and it just didn’t work out.”
Edwards is likely to approach the new season carrying the same appreciation for how top-five and top-10 finishes are the meat and potatoes of a worksheet but looking even harder for victory lane.
Mike Hembree is NASCAR Editor for SPEED.com and has been covering motorsports for 29 years. He is a six-time winner of the National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year Award.
