Carl Edwards—NASCAR Champion.
After only five years competing full-time in NASCAR, that word can now be used to describe Edwards, who ran away with the NASCAR Busch Series driver’s championship last season.
For Edwards it marked the third straight season in which he ran a full-time Busch and Cup schedule and the second time he finished in the top 10 in each series. After finishing third on both circuits in 2005, Edwards followed up his Busch title with a ninth-place effort in the Cup standings last year.
In fact, backflips were a fairly common occurrence in ‘07 because in addition to his four Busch wins, Edwards captured three Nextel Cup events. His win at Michigan in June ended a 52-race winless streak and served as a springboard to a pair of other wins (Bristol in August and Dover in September) and a place in the Chase for the Nextel Cup for the second time.
Edwards, who was reunited with crew chief Bob Osborne, posted 15 top-10 finishes last season and sealed his spot in The Chase with four straight top-10 efforts going into the final pre-chase event at Richmond in September.
Like former teammate Kurt Busch, Edwards made the direct jump from Truck to Cup midway through the ‘04 season when Jeff Burton departed for Richard Childress Racing. Edwards debuted as driver of the No. 99 Roush Racing Taurus at Michigan in August of that year and made a positive impression right off the bat by posting a 10th-place finish in that event.
He became a household name to all NASCAR fans the following year when he became the first driver to win his first Busch and Nextel Cup Series races on the same weekend. After winning the Aaron’s 312 Busch event at Atlanta Motor Speedway on Saturday, Edwards beat Jimmie Johnson in a photo finish to win the Golden Corral 500 Nextel Cup race the following day.
But like many young drivers who make it to the Cup level, Edwards got his start in the Craftsman Truck Series. He earned Raybestos Rookie of the Year honors in ‘03 when he won three times and finished eighth in the final point standings, but was even better the following season with three wins and a fourth-place series finish.
What makes Edwards’ rise even more impressive is that just a few years ago he was a college student at the University of Missouri and a part-time substitute teacher.
The St. Louis area native was a fixture locally after starting his race career in 1993 driving four-cylinder mini-sprints. A few years later Edwards was in the modified ranks and won the Capital Speedway (Mo.) rookie of the year award in ‘98. In following seasons he won the modified and pro-modified NASCAR Weekly Racing Series championships in ‘99 and ‘00, respectively.
Edwards has also appeared in the USAC Silver Crown Series, but really made his mark during a seven-race stretch in the Truck Series with Mittler Brothers Motorsports in ‘02. He qualified 15th or better in six of those events and opened eyes with an eighth-place run at Kansas. That was enough for Roush Racing, which signed Edwards shortly before the start of the ’03 season.
Racing is something Edwards has been surrounded by ever since he was a child and watched his father Mike compete throughout the Midwest. Mike Edwards posted more than 200 feature wins at a variety of tracks during a four-decade stretch driving modifieds and midgets.
