To say that Carl Edwards took the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series by storm in his first full season would be an understatement.
No driver captured the imagination of the fans in 2005 more than the Columbia, Mo., native who won four times and had a legitimate chance of winning the series championship.
Edwards trailed champion Tony Stewart by 87 points going into the Ford 400 finale, but served notice that he was going to make Stewart earn his second title by winning the pole in qualifying and leading the most laps in the race. Edwards, who trailed Stewart by 12 points at one juncture before pit strategy jumbled the running order late, finished fourth and ended up tied with Roush Racing teammate Greg Biffle for second place.
Even though the two were each 35 points behind Stewart, Edwards was officially credited with third-place in the standings because Biffle won more races (six) than Edwards.
Despite starting the season without a full-time sponsor, Edwards got off to a good start by finishing 12th at Daytona, fifth at California and 14th at Las Vegas. His breakthrough performance came in Week Four at Atlanta Motor Speedway when he won the Busch and Cup races—the latter coming in dramatic fashion as he edged Jimmie Johnson by inches at the finish line.
The resulting backflip was a refreshing change of pace and ignited one of the more impressive first-year seasons in Cup history. Even though he technically wasn’t considered a rookie due to his 13 starts in 2004, Edwards’ performance and modest personality left many shaking their heads. Besides his four wins, Edwards ended the ’05 season with 18 top-10s, 13 top-fives, and two poles.
As if that dramatic weekend sweep wasn’t enough, Edwards may have achieved an even greater feat when he won at Pocono in June after never even seeing the place prior to that weekend.
Edwards qualified for the Chase for the Nextel Cup in eighth-place and was sitting fifth (149 points behind) with four races left before back-to-back wins at Atlanta and Texas got him back into serious contention.
While his Cup exploits is what got most of the attention, Edwards had similar success running a full-time Busch schedule as he posted five wins, four poles, 21 top-10s and 15 top-fives en route to a third-place finish in the series standings.
Edwards made the jump from Truck to Cup midway through the 2004 season when Jeff Burton departed for Richard Childress Racing and debuted as driver of the No. 99 Roush Racing Taurus at Michigan in August. He immediately made a positive impression on his fellow competitors and race fans by posting a 10th-place finish in that event.
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 2003 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 1998. In following seasons he won the modified and pro-modified NASCAR Weekly Racing Series championships in 1999 and 2000, 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 2002. 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.