Edwards discusses season of his discontent

            AVONDALE, Ariz. – The season began with such high hopes for Carl Edwards.

            Though second to Jimmie Johnson in the 2008 standings, Edwards won more races (9) than anyone else.

            Edwards goes into the final two races winless. Though he made the Chase for the Sprint Cup, he has languished down the stretch and enters the Checker O’Reilly 500 11^th in the 12-driver field. He has been hampered by a broken right ankle suffered throwing a Frisbee with friends.

“If winning bred winning, we’d have won plenty this year,” he said. “We were so good last season. It doesn’t really work like that. You show up at the race track. And, first of all, you have to be fast enough to win. Otherwise, you can’t really plan on winning. If you’re fast enough to win, things have to go your way. If they go your way, you might win.

“So far this season, we just haven’t had a lot of races where we’re fast enough to win. … The difference between this season and last season is instead of one out of 10 races were fast enough to win, as we are this season, last season I felt it was like eight out of 10 races we were fast enough to win. So, we just have to be better. And that’s what we’ve been working on.”

            Man, they’re good – Not that he’s ready to concede or not, but Jeff Gordon paid tribute to the team effort that has propelled his teammate, Jimmie Johnson, to unprecedented success.

“I'm not trying to take anything away from Jimmie, but when you say ‘Jimmie,’ I say ‘team,’” said Gordon. “To me, all the success I have at winning championships is because we were the best team. And I did my part, and Jimmie, he focused really hard on being prepared and giving his best. That's a huge part of a team, you know. Not every driver out there does it, you know, puts that much effort into it.

“But not all crew chiefs put the effort that Chad (Knaus) puts in. Not all team members put in that effort, and not all organizations put in the effort. So, it's a total team effort.”

Que cera, cera – Mark Martin’s deficit, 73 points to Johnson, is still imposing, and the veteran is realistic about his chances.

“NASCAR racing's no different today than it was 30 years ago in this respect,” he said. “If there are no problems and you have the two top five performing teams, then there won't be any major shift if nothing goes wrong, OK?

“You know, we turned upside down at Talladega. Had I managed not to be involved in that wreck, you know, then the race would be on and it would be basically down to who scored the most points in the last two races, right down to performance. But this is the same as it's always been.”

            Pieces of the puzzle – When Stewart Haas Racing announces a new sponsor for Ryan Newman on Sunday morning, it will be a supplementary announcement.

            The U.S. Army announced it will sponsor Newman again, announcing a deal to be the primary sponsor in 15 of the 2010 season’s 36 races.

            The announcement came from the Army’s Accessions Command, headquartered at Fort Knox, Ky., by the way.

You may contact Monte Dutton at mdutton@gastongazette.com.