Head Over Heels About His Job

Four years ago, Carl Edwards was at Irwindale Speedway to drive a Silver Crown car in a U.S. Auto Club race. When he wasn’t on the track, he was handing out business cards that read: “Carl Edwards: Race Car Driver. If You’re Looking for a Driver, You’re Looking for Me.”

Two years later, unable to find sponsors, he worked as a substitute teacher while attending the University of Missouri. He also placed an advertisement in National Speed Sport News, seeking a ride.

Jack Roush, always on the lookout for young drivers, saw it and hired Edwards to drive one of his trucks in NASCAR’s third-ranking Craftsman series.

Truth is, Roush had spotted Edwards driving a truck for Mike Mittler’s underfunded team and liked what he saw, and the ad told him Edwards was available for the 2003 season. It took only a season and a half for Roush to move him into the struggling Jeff Burton’s seat in the No. 99 Nextel Cup Ford.

Today, he is the most intriguing driver in NASCAR. Chevrolet drivers Tony Stewart and Jimmie Johnson are battling for the Nextel Cup championship with two races remaining in the Chase for the Championship -- Sunday at Phoenix and Nov. 20 at Homestead, Fla. -- but the back-flipping driver from Columbia, Mo., has won the last two races and is still in the running, 77 points behind Stewart and 39 behind Johnson.

No matter the problem, the big John Elway-like smile on Edwards’ face never shuts down. Of course, there haven’t been many problems this season, what with four victories, 12 top-five finishes and one pole at California Speedway.

His confidence never wavers. After Edwards had won last week at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Roush said he was looking ahead to 2006, because Stewart was too far ahead to be caught.

“What are you talking about, Jack?” Edwards protested. “Winning this championship is a lot closer to a realistic goal than just that fact that I’m here. I don’t know if that’s the right way to put it, but five years ago, I’d never raced on a pavement racetrack and people were laughing at me for passing out business cards, so this is not the biggest challenge of my life, by any means.

“We’re going to try and win these races. We probably won’t beat Tony Stewart ... but that’s not going to stop us from giving 100%. For sure, I want to prove [Roush] wrong....

“The reality of the Chase is that it could come down to the last lap at Homestead.”

When Roush moved Edwards up to his Nextel Cup team in midseason last year, he was thought of as a work in progress, there to learn from his teammates -- the two most recent Cup champions, Kurt Busch and Matt Kenseth, a four-time runner-up in Mark Martin and Greg Biffle, a Busch series and Craftsman truck champion.

Edwards had raced in only one Busch race and had never been in a Nextel Cup car.

This season, Roush qualified all five of his drivers for the 10-driver Chase, but now only Edwards is a contender.

Race after race, the 26-year-old Missourian has confounded experts who expect him to crack under the pressure of contending for the $5-million Nextel Cup champion’s purse. Instead, he has kept smiling, making the most of his opportunity, doing back flips for the fans when he wins.

How, others ponder, does he stay so unaffected? A vignette from his youth may explain it:

“When I first started out racing, I was so poor that I slept in my truck at racetracks to save money. Back home in Columbia, I had an old car with a bad starter, so I would park it on a hill and when I wanted to drive it, I would jump in, let it start rolling down the hill and start it with the clutch.”

So adversity is nothing new, and neither is racing. As a youngster, he traveled with his father, Mike, who won more than 200 races driving modified stock cars and midgets for four decades on Midwestern tracks. Carl was 13 when he began racing four-cylinder mini-sprints in 1993.

His work ethic is as impressive as his enthusiasm.

When Roush moved him into a Cup car, he was still driving the team’s Craftsman truck. He had won the season opener at Daytona, giving him an opportunity to show his trademark back flip to a national audience for the first time, and was in the running for the season championship.

To meet schedule conflicts, he once drove the truck Saturday in Las Vegas, then flew all night to Dover, Del., to drive in the Cup race the next day. Several weeks later, he drove the truck at California Speedway and a day later was in Talladega, Ala., for another Cup race.

He had his breakthrough weekend last March in Atlanta, where he won his first Busch race on Saturday and proclaimed it “the greatest day of my life,” then had to revise his thoughts after winning his first Nextel Cup race the next day.

It was how he won the Cup race, though, not that he won, that amazed the full house at Atlanta. Coming out of Turn 2 on the final lap, Edwards was right on Johnson’s bumper. Johnson moved up the track in a blocking maneuver, but Edwards went even higher, well off the racing line, and came off the final turn with momentum enough to win by about half a car length.

“It was just an awesome race,” he said. “It couldn’t have been any better, to win a race by passing somebody on the outside on the last lap at a big, fast track like Atlanta was great. And for it to be Jimmie Johnson, that made it really special.

“Everything I’ve done the last three years has been icing on the cake. Sometimes I’m borderline neurotic about things, but I want to say that I do what I’m doing because I love racing and I want to win this championship. To tell the truth, I might be having too much fun because nobody expected us to be here, much less win.”

And the trademark back flip from the window sill of his car?

“It’s just something I picked up goofing around as a kid,” Edwards said. “Hopefully I’ll be doing victory back flips 20 years from now. I may have to get my crew to bring out a pad or something if my bone structure gets brittle, but as I long as I can keep winning races I’ll keep doing back flips.”

And the championship?

Before the second Atlanta race, two races ago, he was 149 points behind but since has gained 72 points.

“Only 77 left,” he said, flashing that wide smile.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Leading Cup contenders

The chase for the Nextel Cup going into Sunday’s Checker Auto Parts 500 at Phoenix International Raceway:

*--* Rk Driver Points Behind Starts Poles Wins Top 5 Top 10 Win nin gs 1. Tony 6,255 -- 34 3 5 16 24 $6, Stewart 720 ,78 0 2. Jimmie 6,217 38 34 1 4 13 21 $6, Johnson 563 ,06 0 3. Carl 6,178 77 34 1 4 12 16 $4, Edwards 620 ,69 0 4. Greg 6,133 122 34 0 5 13 19 $5, Biffle 237 ,88 0 5. Mark 6,132 123 34 0 1 11 18 $5, Martin 675 ,10 0

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Source: NASCAR Los Angeles Times