What’s on My Mind

Carl Edwards and Fastenal will be part of the Sprint Cup Series begining in 2012 (Photo by Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images for NASCAR)

This morning Fastenal announced that it would be moving from the Nationwide Series with Carl Edwards to the Sprint Cup Series for 17 races in 2012.  Fastenal has been a sponsor for Edwards since 2010, and been a sponsor in NASCAR since their first stint in the Camping World Truck Series in 2006.  There is no word on who will fill in the blank of the remaining 19 races on the schedule, as Aflac appears to be lowering its deal down

“I’ve appreciated the long relationship that I’ve had with Fastenal,” Edwards said “I’m proud that they believe so strongly in our team and program that they are making the commitment to sponsor us in the Sprint Cup Series.

“My partnership with Fastenal started in 1999 at my local dirt track. I would have never imagined that we would be going to the 2012 Daytona 500 together.”

Edwards will begin piloting the No. 99 Fastenal Ford Fusion at the 2012 Daytona 500 at Daytona International Speedway in February.  There has been no word what races they will be the sponsor in for Edwards next season, and what the value of the sponsorship is.

Fans worried?  Media not talking?  Yeah that’s been the case for about the last 6 races on the schedule for Carl Edwards and his team. 

Edwards and Osborne stand to discuss practice at Charlotte Motor Speedway in October of 2010 (Rusty Jarrett/Getty Images)

It is a case of preparation for the Chase.  While wins are important, Jimmie Johnson and Chad Knaus have been known to slide under the radar for a bit during the regular season and then show up all of a sudden in a blink of an eye in the Chase and steal the show.  Now, has Carl Edwards and Bob Osborne taken the same page out of the 48 team’s winning book to try and beat them at their own game? 

Edwards has been very quiet while approaching each race.  He has not led many laps, he has had a couple of struggling events during the season; however, he has approached the regular season as a test for the final ten races.  This weekend’s race at Atlanta is probably one of the better places for Edwards to start showing his muscle in a full speed battle on the 1.54 mile, high banked quad oval.  In the last 8 years, no one has seen more success at Atlanta

Edwards has scored three wins at the track and has been very good at running up front at Atlanta.  When it comes to high banked intermediate tracks, he gets the job done as good if not better than anyone else on the schedule.  Looking at the Chase, the schedule probably favors the Missouri drivers style because of the ten tracks in the Chase, five are on intermediate 1.5 mile tracks, there is a restrictor plate race, a short track event, and three races on one mile tracks, one at Dover that might is well fit the style of a fast intermediate track.

In the ten tracks that the series races will race at in the Chase, Carl Edwards has wins at

• Dover – 1
• Texas – 3
• Phoenix – 1
• Homestead – 2

Everything will spread out once the Chase starts and if Edwards performs better inside the Chase because of the research that he and Osborne have been doing before it all starts, they will be considered geniuses on the track. In the past, Carl Edwards has gone into the Chase with a lot of pressure(2008) and had several races that put him behind the eight ball.  Edwards has been very quiet on and off the track, and he said it last year that he didn’t want to be considered the favorite to knock Jimmie Johnson off of the top spot.  He and his crew chief Bob Osborne just might be doing it in the 48′s fashion. 

With the car research that the team has been doing over the last five or six weekends there could be a major run planned inside the Chase.  Edwards has struggled on flat tracks throughout his entire career, however, his strong point has been racing on the intermediate quad and tri-oval venues.  Many call them the cookie cutter tracks of NASCAR.  Edwards made a comment a couple of weeks ago that the team was going all out at Michigan and Atlanta, however, using races at Bristol and Richmond to get prepped for the short track event at Martinsville.  Atlanta is the next race on the schedule, and it might be considered Carl Edwards’ home away from home.  He won both his first career Sprint Cup and Nationwide Series events at the track in 2005, and he’s scored two other victories at the track in Sprint Cup. 

Who is the media talking about to win the title?  Right now it seems all the attention is pointed at Kyle Busch, Jimmie Johnson and Brad Keselowski.  But remember last year?  Denny Hamlin came into the Chase with a heap of momentum and faltered down the line later on, same for Kyle Busch in 2008.  Momentum doesn’t always mean it’s good when the series has ten races left to race.  You certainly don’t want to get too hot, too early.  Carl has kept himself warm enough to stay amongst the contenders and had it not been for a bad spark plug in Michigan, Edwards could likely still be leading the points standings.

So those that don’t like the fact that the team has been researching, here is what I’ve got to tell you.  It’s worked for the 48 car the last 5 seasons, why couldn’t it work for the 99?

Bad luck, a bad spark plug, and a few other things have cost Carl Edwards some points over the course of the last few weeks.  The debate has raged on and on about whether or not not Carl Edwards is still in the fight for the championship.  Answer is, yes, no matter what opinionated people want to think.

I am just going to use an example of how drivers and their teams can be struggling at this point in the season and then make a dramatic recovery over the last ten races.  Jimmie Johnson’s first championship season in 2006 is one that I can remember very well.  He had four races over the last six before the Chase started that were outside of the top-ten and many were wondering what was going on with JJ and his team.  He recovered and won his first title.  Last year, same scenario and Jimmie Johnson won his fifth straight championship.

Now we are discussing two different drivers but could we be reasonable here.  Carl and his team has been sitting up at the top of the points standings for much of this season until the last two weekends.  I just love how people speculate on what has gone wrong, and say that Bob Osborne should be fired, that the entire crew should be let go and another group of guys hired.  That isn’t the case in my opinion.  These guys have put Carl Edwards in line for several wins this season – it just did not work out for them.   There are three races before the Chase begins and one thing I am looking at is, now the media isn’t focused on Edwards, they have their minds focused upon Kyle Busch.  The less the media talks about Carl the better in my opinion.  I have never liked going into the Chase as the favorite to win it, its about the same as the favorite to enter the NFL playoffs and then fall flat on your face in the first game.

The team has one win and sits fourth in the points standings right now.  I said it last weekend that these next few weekends were a good time to experiment with things that they aren’t sure about before the Chase begins.  Edwards is one of those drivers that doesn’t believe in momentum and knows that things can turn around very quick.  But I have been wondering for the last few weeks, has the team been holding their cards back until the Chase begins?

Was Bob Osborne one of the major keys to Carl Edwards re-signing with Roush?(Photo by Rusty Jarrett/Getty Images for NASCAR)

Many might remember it was a couple of months ago when I wrote that drivers shop around but sometimes do not buy the product.  This time with Carl Edwards it was one of those situations.  Many media personnel thought that it was signed and sealed that Edwards was going to Toyota and Joe Gibbs on behalf of a deal that was laid down by Gibbs’ sponsor Home Depot.  Rumor had it that Home Depot had given Gibbs a blank check to get Edwards to sign, alert the media – it FAILED. 

Jack Roush and his organization did something what very few teams would do for any of their drivers.  Roush gave out very important information from his most expert employee’s minds.  Jack Roush said it himself, had Edwards not have signed with him, that would have been very important information that he would have given out to his driver. 

But one thing Edwards did not do was take the bait and go to Gibbs.  You have to look at key areas where Roush has been beating JGR at, and one is in reliability.  It was just last week when all the motor mouth’s were speaking about Edwards leaving that Denny Hamlin’s Toyota went up in smoke right in front of Edwards’ car.  Did that perhaps set off an alarm in Edwards’ mind?  Possibly, who will ever know except for Carl.

Then there is that one keyword – Loyalty.  In this sport, that is a word that is getting to be used very little.  Mark Martin stuck it out for over 20 years at Roush, and Dale Earnhardt was at RCR for the same period.  Jeff Gordon is running on that same time frame with Hendrick Motorsports.  You have to read through the lines and realize that when a driver sticks with a team as Edwards did his, over the fact that an offer that was rumored to be huge and monumental; there had to be an even bigger reason for staying.    That all is put down by that one little five letter word.  Carl Edwards remained “loyal” to Jack Roush and the same can be said the other way around. 

Gibbs fans can sit and respond to what I have to say, however, fact is Gibbs would not be a better place for Carl Edwards than where he is at.  I look at the top-drivers that Gibbs has in Hamlin and Busch and both are very high tempered and emotional drivers, and then had you thrown Carl Edwards in that mix, it would have certainly put too many “roosters in the hen house.” 

“I just decided this is the right place for me,” said Edwards, “If I would have made that decision three months ago, I might have had more second thoughts,” he said. “It took time for me to come to that conclusion. There wasn’t one thing that changed my mind.”

As I said in my other article, drivers do shopping around and many could have speculated on what Carl Edwards was going to do in his future but only he knew what he was going to do.  I was one of those fans that were in speculation over what he was going to do, and truthfully, I thought that he was going to take the money and run up until weekend before last when Ford put an offer down.  In Carl Edwards’ career with Roush, he has put up spectacular numbers that many would consider career accomplishments – with 59 total victories (19 Sprint Cup, 34 Nationwide and 6 Truck Series), and a Nationwide Series championship. 

Here is the other big decision maker I think.  Ford Motor Company.  Ford has been the longest lasting racing manufacturer in NASCAR.  They were the ones that came up with the slogan “Win on Sunday, sell on Monday,” and when you look right now at the spokesmen that Ford have at its hands, Carl Edwards is the right man.  When put up against any other driver on the track when it comes to speaking outside of racing and advertisement, there is no one better than Carl Edwards at it.  IF and I mean IF, Ford did put up an offer he could not refuse, Ford will get its money back through sales at dealerships.  It may not seem like there are many fans left that buy because of their driver, but there are.  I for one am a fan that wouldn’t purchase anything unless it has a Blue Oval on the nose. 

Ford gets put in the limelight every weekend that Edwards is interviewed in front of the camera.  He makes sure his main sponsors, his team, and his car make is mentioned.  Some might even say its rehearsed, however, he doesn’t forget the people that got him there. 

Then my last major reason I believe he did not take the deal at Gibbs.  Bob Osborne. 

Since August of 2004, Carl Edwards has worked with his crew chief Bob Osborne in the Sprint Cup Series.  They have won all but one event in Sprint Cup together, that was the victory that came at Texas Motor Speedway in April of 2008(Osborne was suspended for 6 races because of an oil tank lid).  They were separated for almost 3/4 of a season in 2006, when Roush decided to put Osborne with Jamie McMurray and it did not work out.  Edwards worked with Wally Brown and the two didn’t have the spark.  Through someone very reliable I knew Osborne was already signed to an extension before Edwards was, and that his deal was setup to help lure Edwards into re-signing.  I know that one thing that Edwards has demanded since he signed his last extension, he makes the crew chief decisions. 

I know that last Winter there was a lot of talk inside of the shop that Drew Blickensderfer had talked about taking over the 99 car.  We see that, of all things, it did not happen.  Edwards and Bob Osborne have since won three races together, and the Sprint All Star Race.  They have been on top of the points standings for 15 of the 21 events this season, and even though they have only scored one victory, their consistent finishes matter most.  They have scored 10 top-five finishes, and 15 top-tens, and even though they will lose the points lead when the Chase starts as of now, they have things going their way.

So like I said in this case, Carl Edwards chose his OLD and reliable “Ford” over buying that new foreign made “Toyota.”

It was just two days ago that I was debating with a 16-year old that you don’t splatter rumors over the web that aren’t true.  Sometimes it comes back to bite you in the butt, and sometimes it doesn’t feel so good when it does.  It was just about a montha ago that I debated it out with a comedian from NY about the same issue, and he guaranteed me and a friend that Carl Edwards was signed with Joe Gibbs Racing and he had a solid 100% guaranteed source that knew Carl had signed, and was going to be doing a photo shoot with Home Depot to solidify things up.  What did Carl do?  I didn’t see him saying this morning about Joe Gibbs Racing……..

Jack Roush and Carl Edwards shake hands while celebrating their win at Michigan in June in the Nationwide Series. (June 17, 2011 - Photo by Jason Smith/Getty Images North America)

“I sincerely appreciate the amazing opportunity that Jack Roush has given me in this sport and am honored to race for him,” said Edwards. “As an organization, Roush Fenway provides the resources I need to win, and as a driver, that’s the most important thing. We’re having a fun season on the race track as we’re leading the points and in great position for the Chase. That’s the result of a lot of hard work from the men and women at Roush Fenway, Ford Motor Company and Roush Yates Engines. I really enjoy competing with this group and looking forward to continuing that relationship into the future.”

No he was praising his car owner for the last seven years, who has provided him with a solid career in NASCAR ever since he was put in a Ford F-150 in 2003.  Fans need to take one thing from this entire discussion of events that has gone on in the last 4 months.  Don’t always believe what you see or hear.  Rumors are rumors, and they are very, very hard to ignore but until the man that is looking to sign says something, or the car owner, don’t believe it when you see someone say that they have a 100% true source, it is usually not true.  I have a few very solid sources when it comes to things, but one thing is for sure I do not tell who they are.

There is a huge risk for anyone on a race team for telling any news about the race team that hasn’t been officially said.  These guys are under contract themselves and they face penalties for telling things to people that should not be told.  I take what a friend said very serious, she made the biggest point about solid sources from a team.

“If there is anyone at RFR who TRULY knew what’s up, they’re obviously not going to risk their job blabbing it so that it ends up on FB for the entire world to see. Especially the ones who are under contract. So when someone’s saying they’ve got all these connections… any TRUE Connection would NEVER Blab.” 

I think that many people forget, especially in racing that rumors can easily get started off by a post on facebook or on twitter and it doesn’t take long to spread out into the open world of the media.  Carl Edwards wanted privacy when he was dealing with his contract negotiations and the longer that it went, the more the rumors were begining to go on.  So many, including myself, were expecting Carl Edwards to leave and go to Gibbs.  But when I woke up this morning I had a phone with a text message saying he had re-signed with RFR, and that he was staying put.  I was very pleased to read the news. 

It just shows that until it comes from the horses mouth, you don’t believe it.  Carl is where many expected him to leave from, but he made the right decision and stayed at RFR.

Carl Edwards spent more than half of the race yesterday in the booth with TNT’s commentators after his engine broke a valve on the head of the engine.  He knew it would take a win for someone to surpass him in the points standings, and likely would go to Michigan as the series’ points leader.

I have had several debates about what happened yesterday.  A broken valve is something that is not a part that can be stopped as some have asked, it is a part that moves up and down inside the cylinder heads, there are intake and exhaust valves for each cylinder inside the motor.   The team repaired the car enough where he could finish the last 3 laps of the race and leave without a DNF in the race.  So now fans, let us all put that race at Pocono behind us.  Pocono has been one of the up-and-down venues in the past for Edwards, but Michigan is a totally different story for Edwards.

In 13 career races at Michigan, Edwards has 3 wins, 8 top-fives, and 11 top-ten finishes, he has been out front for 244 of 2535 laps and has never failed to complete a lap around Michigan.  Going into this weekend’s race, Edwards should be considered a pre-race favorite to win the 400-miler on the two-mile oval.  Doug Yates builds excellent engines and I will go against any fan that put that man down Sunday after the valve broke on the engine, and he is a major reason that the Ford teams are back to consistently running up front each weekend.  Parts malfunction, it is something every team has to put behind them. 

That was the first engine problem that the 99 car has been faced with since the engine let go back at Charlotte in October of 2009.  I will take that any day of the week compared to a lot of teams in this sport.  So going into Michigan,