With a win in hand, Carl Edwards can finally have some fun

When Carl Edwards joined Joe Gibbs Racing during the offseason, he fully understood the expectations before him.

What Edwards knew was Kevin Harvick, in his first season with Stewart-Haas Racing, won last year’s championship over runner-up Ryan Newman, also in his first year with Richard Childress Racing. He also saw Matt Kenseth make a similar jump two years ago from Roush Fenway Racing to JGR, then go on to win a Sprint Cup Series-best seven races and end a close second in the standings.

This was the threshold placed upon Edwards, one of NASCAR’s best drivers, aligning with one of the sport’s prominent organizations, and paired with Darian Grubb, himself a championship-winning crew chief.

“We planned on having a few wins and dominating by this point in the season,” Edwards told SB Nation Wednesday during a phone interview promoting Subway’s new line of guacamole.

Except the opening months of the season hadn’t gone as planned. Edwards was struggling, and the brand-new fourth team JGR created solely to lure him away from Roush had yet to come together. Through 11 races, Edwards had just a single top-10 finish.

Making matters worse, Edwards was admittedly pressing. He wanted so badly to show his new employer he was deserving. Yet each time he pressed, the mistakes kept compounding.

“I have very high expectations, and when we started the year and things weren’t going the way I expected them to or wanted them to, it became very difficult to slow down and accept,” Edwards said. “And that’s where you start to see mistakes to come into play. You press too hard, you try too hard.

“One of the toughest things to deal with in sports is when you don’t perform up to your expectations. You have to be very careful not to collapse and not try too hard to make it worse.”

The frustration, angst and disappointment vanished in a plume of celebratory tire smoke last Sunday in the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. That was when Edwards took his No. 19 Subway Toyota to victory lane.

And though the triumph wasn’t about outperforming the competition by sheer speed, there’s no need to apologize for winning. Edwards executed when he had to, going the final 62 laps without pitting for fuel.

“I don’t know of [a win] that felt like that,” Edwards said. “The move to JGR was such a big move for me and so many people put so much into that, that I feel like it’s not only for me but an opportunity for me to really to validate everyone’s confidence in this team.”

By winning, the reality is Edwards’ season really doesn’t matter now until the fall when the playoffs begin. Assured a spot in the Chase for the Sprint Cup, the No. 19 team can compete with minimal pressure for the remaining 14 regular season races.

“Now we can go race and have fun,” Edwards said. “I’m excited for this weekend now more than I was because I know I can be more aggressive on the restarts, I can run the car looser and I can take chances. We can swing for the fences.

“In this sport not having a win and not being locked into the Chase, you cannot drive like that because there is too much to lose. This is a big opportunity for us. We can just go race now and don’t have to worry about points or anything like that.”

What the Charlotte victory also does is provide a cushion for Edwards to continue getting acclimated to his new surroundings, while his team further develops cohesion. It’s a blueprint Harvick used en route to his first title last season.

Having joined a startup team, the defending champion endured some tough moments, often punctuated by potential victories that alluded him due to mechanical failures. However, because Harvick did win early, the pressure to perform was off and he had ample time to prepare for the playoffs.

“My mission is to win the championship this year and I’m very aware that win puts us one giant step closer to that,” Edwards said. “Over the next few months we can get really good at being a team and being the best we can be. And that stuff is hard to learn under pressure. Now we have a big opportunity to step it up.”

That’s the championship formula in modern NASCAR: win by any means necessary to earn a Chase bid. Edwards did just that Sunday, meaning his main objective, a championship, is still clearly attainable.