Edwards - Charlotte test media visit

Carl Edwards, driver of the No. 99 Aflac Ford Fusion, moved up seven spots in the NASCAR Sprint Cup standings after a sixth-place finish at Bristol on Sunday. Edwards, who sits 13th in the overall standings, came to the Charlotte Motor Speedway infield media center to discuss how testing has gone with the new spoiler.

HOW IS THE TEST GOING? "Our test is going lousy, actually. We're very slow and it's very frustrating. We worked very hard all day yesterday and we've worked hard this morning. I would love to be able to say that we're really fast and it's going well, but we're learning all the things that aren't working. The good thing is that we get two days here to work on it. I would have assumed we'd be better, so this is good for our team to get a chance to work on everything. I really like the spoiler. I think it looks great. I think it's a great move. The fans are gonna like it and it doesn't seem to make the car feel much different."

YOU GOT THE VERY FIRST FAN VOTE FOR THE SPRINT ALL-STAR RACE. HOW DOES THAT MAKE YOU FEEL? "That means a lot. I hope it's not the only vote I get. I hope we get a lot of them. I'd love to not rely on that, and I hope our Aflac team can win a race here in the next month or so and earn our way into that All-Star event, but that means the world. Hopefully, those fans will support us."

HAVE YOU FIGURED ANYTHING OUT AS TO WHY YOU'RE SLOW? "We have found a couple of small things, but it's tough. We have gotten to a point with this car where we say, 'Alright, that drives OK, but it's not fast enough.' So we've got to figure out as a team what we're missing. The good thing is that I'm gonna lean on for a little bit of hope is that we're making two, three, five, and maybe even 10-lap runs. Once you come and race here, it becomes a lot different animal. We've tested here and been very fast before and then came back and raced terribly, so maybe we're not as bad as it seems like just based on time with these first few laps. But, to answer your question, I don't know exactly what we're missing and I just hope we figure it out. We've got to be better. This is a pretty good place to test. It's nice and smooth and gives you a good idea of what your mile-and-a-half package is like."

WHY AREN'T WE SEEING PACKS OF CARS TO GAUGE THE SPOILER? "That throws in another dimension and set of variables that you can't really control. Testing is difficult enough to figure out. If you go out here and run three laps, you come in and you make a change. Then you go back out to determine what that change did. That's difficult enough. To go run in a pack, there's a lot of variables going on there with the air, so you might get a little experience, but you most likely wasted a run because you can't tell if what you did was helping you or if it was the air helping you. So I think that's why. When you're testing, you need to keep the variables you can control under control."

IS THERE A FEAR THE 48 GUYS COULD ADAPT QUICKER TO THIS SPOILER THAN OTHERS? BOTH CHAD AND JIMMIE THINK THEY MAY BE ABLE TO ADAPT QUICKER THAN MAYBE SOME OTHERS. "I felt the same way. I felt like this was gonna be good to shake things up and rely on our engineering prowess and our raw talent to go out here and maybe take advantage of this change, so I feel the same way about us and I'm hoping that rings true. We're not really scared of those guys getting a head start, we're more excited as they seem to be for the change, for the same reasons they are. We'll find out who is better at it, I guess."

HOW MUCH DRAG ARE YOU FEELING DOWN THE STRAIGHTAWAY AND WHEN DO YOU EXPECT THINGS TO START TURNING AROUND AS FAR AS PERFORMANCE? "If I didn't know that spoiler was back there, the first few laps especially yesterday, I couldn't point to something and say, 'Hey, this thing feels different here.' Maybe other guys could. And the reason why I'm so frustrated about today and yesterday is that this has been our bread-and-butter, so that's why we've really got to spend these next few hours here looking at everything. The good thing is Paul Menard was pretty fast, so that's good. We can go look at his notes. On the other side, I think us at Roush Fenway are back up on an upswing. That restart, when I was looking at Matt and Greg in front of me and I'm running third at Bristol, I thought, 'This is nice. This kind of reminds me of a couple years ago.' The horse isn't dead. It's not down there dead, it's still breathing and, hopefully, we can bring it back to life here."

-source: ford racing