NSCS: Carl Edwards Glad Nerves Are Gone, Locked into the Daytona 500

Entering the Daytona 500 in a brand new fourth car for Joe Gibbs Racing, Carl Edwards was not guaranteed as one of the starters for the 57th Annual Daytona 500 due to no owner points.

“There were a lot of meetings and a lot of anxiety over the fact that we could possibly miss the Daytona 500,” he commented on Sunday. “I think we’ve had four or five meetings trying to come up with a strategy for qualifying.”

Though with posting the third fastest qualifying time of the day, Edwards has the No. 19 ARRIS Toyota locked in the show. That’s something that he’s glad to say because “it was going to be really tough to explain to them if we had trouble in the qualifiers”.

Edwards can now enter the Budweiser Duels with the stres off and focus on other things that his teams needs to focus on.

“There are some things like the communication between (crew chief) Darian (Grubb) and I that I think we can work on,” he commented. “The pit stops are going to be important.  Not only is it a new pit crew to me, but it’s a new group working together.  We talked about that a little bit last night.  We didn’t get much opportunity to mess around with pit stops.  As you know, the last pit stop can be huge in the Daytona 500.  It will give us a chance with less pressure to work on all those things.

“As I sit here and think about all of them, it makes me a little more stressed out because there are a lot of things to cover, but that’s a good time to do it.”

While he may locked in the show, he admits that none of their plans that they had discussed worked out in their favor throughout the whole session.

“It was getting that fast time that was the key today.  It wasn’t because we came up with some genius plan,” he commented.

Beyond simply locking himself in, Edwards was able to move on through to the final group and had a shot at the pole, though instead ended up coming up a bit short.

“Jeff Gordon and those guys got the pole because they timed rolling off of pit road better than us,” he commented. “They took a bigger gamble, so you can give them credit for that.”

While he may be happy with the results and is happy if it makes the fans happy, he admits that the group qualifying format was “stressful”.

“This is a heck of a way to qualify for the biggest race of the year, especially for folks that are in our position, because there’s so much chance for a problem or something keeping you out of the race or putting you in a bad position,” he commented. “I don’t know.  I guess it remains to be seen what the best way to do this is, but this is definitely one way.”