NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
  • Peg It on GarageMonkey
CUP: Edwards Set For Short-Track Season
Carl Edwards is more than ready for his first NASCAR Sprint Cup victory of 2009...
Tom Jensen  |  Posted March 19, 2009   Harrisburg, NC
Carl Edwards says the true way to crown a champion is to reward the driver who finishes best on average throughout the entire season. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

Carl Edwards won nine NASCAR Sprint Cup races in 2008 en route to a career-best second-place finish in the point standings. And after a slow start this season, he finally earned his first top-five finish of 2009 two weeks ago at Atlanta Motor Speedway, where he came home fourth.

This week, Edwards and the rest of the Cup racers head to the tiny, high-banked Bristol Motor Speedway, a track where he has enjoyed a fair amount of success in his still-young career. The Missouri native won the August Bristol races in 2007 and ’08, and is hoping that on Sunday he’ll wind up in victory lane for the first time this year.

Edwards, who is fourth in points, is already keeping tabs on where he stands relative to his fellow drivers, mindful of the fact that in four of the past five seasons, the eventual Sprint Cup champion left the spring Bristol race in the top five in points.

“It just really comes down to right now making the Chase (for the Sprint Cup), so we’re all looking for points,” said Edwards. “You want wins because that gives you those bonus points in the Chase, but if we can get out of Bristol with a good run, then we get into some real fun stuff with a lot of different variety of tracks. The last 10 races are a long ways from now, so we just have to do the best we can to be in the hunt there.”

Bristol was repaved between the spring and fall races two years ago, and Edwards clearly was one of the drivers who benefited from the new surface, which allows true multiple grooves, where drivers can pass high or low.

That’s a radical change from the old Bristol, where pretty much the only way a driver could pass was to physically bump the car ahead of him out of the way. That, in turn, has been something of a double-edged sword: On one hand, it’s meant longer stretches of green-flag racing and fewer cautions, which has made for a more consistent show. On the other, the dearth of bump-and-grind racing, in the eyes of some fans, is less exciting.

Edwards understands both sides of that argument. “At first I thought, ‘Man, we’re gonna be able to pass a lot easier, there are a lot of grooves,’” he said. “But that’s not the case. They did such a good job of making the different grooves the same speed that you can’t get by anyone. It went from being a track where you could bump someone out of the way and get by them to a track where now you just run two- or three-wide and you can’t really get by them.”

All things considered, Edwards favors the new configuration. “I still think it’s a better show for the fans,” he said. “I think anytime you have cars racing side-by-side and fighting that hard lap after lap, that’s what the fans come to see, so I think it’s a good move. I like it both ways. I’ve won both ways, but I think this is a good move. I think what they did was right.”

Tom Jensen is the Senior NASCAR Editor for SPEEDtv.com, the former Executive Editor of NASCAR Scene and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. He is the author of “Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of SPEED,” and has appeared on television and radio shows to discuss NASCAR racing. Jensen is the past President of the National Motorsports Press Association. Jensen is the 1997 National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year and has won numerous national and state awards for news reporting, columns and feature writing. The Answer Man is back at SPEEDtv.com. Tom Jensen answers your questions during every race week and looks forward to hearing from you - please e-mail it to

tom_jensen's avatar

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tom Jensen

MORE BY THIS AUTHOR
Advertising | Jobs | Feedback | FAQ | Terms of Use | NEW Privacy Policy | Ad Choices | Site Map
Fox Sports | FUEL TV | FX Network | National Geographic | IGN | AskMen
The Motor Sports Authority, SPEED and associated logos are registered trademarks of Speed Channel Inc.
All Rights Reserved © Speed Channel, Inc. 2013

All external links will open in a new browser window. SPEED.com does not endorse external sites.