DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - Carl Edwards didn't need to be reminded. He knew how close he came.
He knew things might have turned out differently in the 2008 Chase for the Sprint Cup Championship were it not for back-to-back hiccups at Talladega, Ala., and Charlotte, N.C.
At Talladega, Edwards started a 12-car melee that wrecked Roush Fenway Racing teammates Greg Biffle and Matt Kenseth 15 laps from the finish. A mechanical issue at Charlotte forced him to finish 17 laps down in 33d place and left him with five races to make up a 168-point deficit to leader Jimmie Johnson.
Edwards, who won three of the last four races, including the season-ending Ford 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway to close within 69 points, knew if he had pushed a little harder, he would have won his first championship. Instead, Johnson won his third in a row.
"Winning nine races and having a great year and all that is fine," said Edwards, 29. "But I'd take a championship with no wins rather than another nine-win season because I really want to accomplish that goal."
Asked who pushed him the hardest in his three championship drives, Johnson paused to consider the challenges posed two years ago by Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jeff Gordon, who scored six wins and 21 top-fives, and last year by Edwards, who outscored Johnson by 99 points in the last five races.
"Man, I look back at what we had to do to beat Jeff and I think that was pretty damn tough," Johnson said. "If you look at the finishing average that it took, it's pretty hard to beat that. But it's hard to ignore the pressure that Carl put on us. Without Talladega, it would've been a tighter points race. I think both, but Carl's [push] was a little fresher in my mind, so that might stand out a little bit more."
Did Edwards view 2008 as a lost opportunity? Was it a year in which he let a championship slip through his grasp after leading the series in wins (9), average finish (9.5), green-flag passes (1,818), fastest laps (1,091), and driver rating (108.6)?
"I don't think so," Edwards said. "I think 2008 was pretty good by any measure. The wins, I think we scored a lot of points. If we run like that every year, we're going to win a lot of championships. We just have to perform at that level. The wreck at Talladega, any time you go to Talladega you could wreck. I ended up participating in that one a little more than I wanted.
"The deal at Charlotte, that's just bad luck. Other than that, I think our races were really, really good."
So good, in fact, the media made Edwards the preseason favorite to win the 2009 Chase. Edwards was tabbed to snap Johnson's string, which tied Cale Yarborough (1976-78) for the most in a row in NASCAR history. In a poll conducted by NASCARMedia.com, Edwards garnered a whopping 70 first-place votes, compared with 37 for Johnson.
"It doesn't really put any pressure on me that people are picking me and picking us to win the championship," said Edwards, who was named Driver of the Year by the National Motorsports Press Association after finishing as runner-up to Clint Bowyer in the tight Nationwide Series points race.
"I always tell people in 2005 at the end of the season, going into 2006, a lot of people picked me and that sure didn't work out," added Edwards, who failed to qualify for the 10-man Chase and wound up 12th. "I've kind of tried not to pay any attention to that. I put a lot of pressure on myself. Once I'm in that racecar it's all or nothing, so hopefully, that works out, and this doesn't change anything, I don't think."
Entering this season, Edwards feels he's a little more grounded. During the offseason, he got married, traveled with his new wife on a cycling trip to Thailand, then returned home, purchased a piece of farmland in rural Missouri, and got his first tractor to till the soil.
"It's real nice for hunting, about half of it," Edwards said of his parcel. "The other half, we'll probably plant beans or maybe corn."
But make no mistake. Edwards, driver of the No. 99 Ford, is hoping to sow the seeds of a championship this season, beginning with Sunday's Daytona 500.
"It's tough when someone runs as well as Jimmie did," Edwards said. "It's tough to beat him. We showed that, but really I know, other than those two races, we did really, really well. We outperformed that team on the racetrack at a lot of racetracks. Not to take anything away from them, because they did their jobs, but I know that if we replayed those last 10 races five times, we'd win our share of championships.
"So if we just perform at that level and hope that the luck goes our way a little bit, it could be really good."
Do the mishaps at Talladega and Charlotte serve as painful reminders of what could have been?
"It doesn't gnaw at me," Edwards said. "Maybe it should, but what's done is done. I did the best things I thought I could do. My crew guys made the best decisions they could make at the time, and it worked out really well. There were just those couple of races that didn't go like we wanted them to.
"If Jimmie would have had a flat tire here or there, but it doesn't eat at me, because that's how racing or the world works, for that matter."
