NASCAR Cup

Homestead: Edwards - Ford Friday interview

Carl Edwards, driver of the No. 99 Office Depot Ford Fusion, leads all Ford drivers with three victories this season. Plus, he clinched the 2007 NASCAR Busch Series championship a few weeks ago. He says he's looking forward to a break after such a ...

Edited: Nov 17, 2007, 8:22 PM

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Carl Edwards, driver of the No. 99 Office Depot Ford Fusion, leads all Ford drivers with three victories this season. Plus, he clinched the 2007 NASCAR Busch Series championship a few weeks ago. He says he's looking forward to a break after such a busy year.

CARL EDWARDS -- No. 99 Office Depot Ford Fusion

ANY EMOTIONS CONCERNING SAYING GOODBYE TO THE CURRENT RACE CAR, ONE YOU'LL NEVER SEE AGAIN? "I have some emotions about my race car, none of them very good, so far. It'll mean something to be the guy that wins this last race. It's a sport where last week is forgotten pretty quickly, and the greatest thing about this race, winning it, would be to be able to sit on it the whole winter."

YOU HAVE HAD A VERY FULL SEASON, COMPETING FOR CHAMPIONSHIPS IN TWO SERIES. ARE YOU LOOKING FORWARD TO THE BREAK, AND WHEN IS THE NEXT TIME YOU'RE GETTING IN A RACE CAR? "Yeah, I'm looking forward to the break. I don't know the next time I'm getting in a race car. I don't know. I'm going to do some flight training next week, starting Monday, and I'm really looking forward to Christmas. I'm going to have some time off. I think we're going to go somewhere crazy, out of the country, where they don't speak English and don't know anything about NASCAR, and get a week or so of that. But, I like racing. I'll probably end up doing something during the winter. We started an RC car track back home, so we'll race some of those a little bit."

WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN RUNNING FOR A CHAMPIONSHIP AND RUNNING AS A CHAMPION, LIKE YOU HAVE BEEN IN THE BUSCH SERIES FOR A FEW WEEKS? "Yeah, it is nice that we wrapped up the driver's championship. That's a goal that we had during the season, and to accomplish that -- it's like getting that pole last week at Phoenix, you know? We go into qualifying this week, we've already got a pole, we're in the Bud Shootout. You can just relax a little bit more."

YOU HAVE THREE VICTORIES IN THE CUP SERIES. HEADING INTO THIS SEASON, HOW WOULD HAVE FELT KNOWING YOU WOULD HAVE THREE WINS GOING INTO HOMESTEAD? "After 2006, to have three victories this season, that's great. To win at places like Dover and Bristol, short tracks that I hadn't won on before, that's really special. So, I'm happy with those three wins. Hopefully, we can make it a fourth."

LOOKING AHEAD TO NEXT SEASON, HOW GOOD DO YOU THINK THIS TEAM CAN BE? "I believe, barring a spectacular performance from the 48 lately, I feel like we can win a championship. The last two weeks we should've had an average finish of about third. We were running great at Texas on a first run; we had a sway-bar problem. We had dominant car at Phoenix. Man, I was just having a good time driving, and we just can't have things like that happen. This sport is too close. The last two weeks have been extremely frustrating to give up something like 200 points, and if we don't do things like that, we're going to be great."

CAN FINISHING THE SEASON ON A STRONG NOTE CARRY OVER TO THE NEXT YEAR? AND, IS THE REVERSE TRUE: CAN FINISHING POORLY CARRY OVER? "It depends on how tough mentally everyone is, and emotionally. If you've got a good group of guys that are emotionally tough that realize that things like last week are going to happen -- I mean we had great car, they did their jobs right, we should have all walked out of their with our heads up knowing that we had the fastest race car. As long as you've got strong guys that think like that, it doesn't really matter how you finish the year. With that being said, it sure would be nice to come out of Homestead with a trophy, you know?"

DID YOU CARRY ANY OF THAT OUT OF PHOENIX, FEELING BAD ABOUT THAT? "Initially, I was real down about it. But, really, this sport is something where you can only give the best you can give, you can only do the best you can. I felt like I did the best I could, and I felt the same way about Texas, and so did Bob Osborne and all my guys. We just had fluke things happen and failures or mistakes that none of us could've controlled, really."

WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE WAY THE 48 HAS BEEN RUNNING? "The 48 guys, it's spectacular. That's all there is to it. I look over there and hope that we can do that next year. It appears that they're so good that they can race at about 90 percent effort for most of the race and then go at the end, and they're good enough that they can play it safe like that most of the time. But, to be that good is really tough."

-credit: ford racing

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