FIX UNIVERSITY
FIX UNIVERSITY
CUP: Edwards Adjusting To The Glen
“We have to qualify better,” Edwards said Friday. “I don’t know what I am doing wrong, or what we are doing wrong with the car. It seems like after qualifying we are hanging our heads, but then after the race we are one of the fastest two or three race cars. I have a feeling it would be easier to run third, second or first if we started closer to that position.
“That is something we are going to work on. It is going to be a little more difficult with having a day between practice and qualifying and running the Nationwide car. When you start a race 33rd and have a survival mentality, then you race for the lead for like 20 minutes [and] it is tough. If I were racing like that the whole time, I would have a better chance.”
Qualifying for Sunday’s Heluva Good at the Glen is scheduled at 11:10 a.m. (ET) Saturday at Watkins Glen.
“I don’t think I have ever passed that many cars on a road race before,” Edwards said of last year. “A lot of it was strategy and restarts. If someone makes a mistake, you can pick up three of four spots in a hurry, but it can go the other way, too. We just need to qualify better, that’s all.”
In five career races at Watkins Glen, Edwards has a pair of top fives, four top 10s and an average finish of 8.8, pretty good for a guy who took to the track like a magnet to wood.
“As a kid growing up and watching on TV, I always thought this was a neat one to watch,” Edwards said. “The one I always remember is Rusty Wallace on his birthday running second and off in the dirt doing everything he could to get the win.
“For me, coming here my first time, it was such a challenging race track. I think it was a two-day test, Nationwide and Cup right after one another. I wrecked my Nationwide car right off the bat. Brad Parrott was my crew chief, and he said, ‘That is it. If you wrecked the first one that early, you will probably wreck the second one, and we can’t afford it.’
“So I sat and watched guys test all day. The next morning I went out in the Cup car and backed it into the fence in the first lap. I thought, ‘This is not the way to start a relationship with a race track.’ Now I have run here pretty well the last few times, and it is a track that I have worked very hard at and has become something I really look forward to.”
Well, maybe after qualifying.
Mike Hembree is NASCAR Editor for SPEED.com and has been covering motorsports for 28 years. He has written several books on NASCAR, including "NASCAR: The Definitive History of America's Sport" and "Then Tony Said To Junior: The Best NASCAR Stories Ever Told". He is a six-time winner of the National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year Award.
