Kyle Busch, Carl Edwards balance teamwork and own championship aspirations

As Kyle Busch and Carl Edwards sat next to one another on the dais on Friday at Homestead-Miami Speedway, cracking jokes and telling stories, you would’ve thought they were at some neighborhood bar having a beer.

Not at any point did either convey they were in battle with Jimmie Johnson and Joey Logano in which the best finisher in Sunday’s Ford 400 would win the championship. Instead, Edwards and Busch discussed the former needing a police escort to go shopping on Thursday at Macy’s, and their respective workout habits — Edwards said he went for a 10-mile run on Friday morning, while Busch said he barely walked 10 feet.

If Edwards and Busch’s camaraderie feels natural, it’s because it is. The two are teammates at Joe Gibbs Racing, which also fields cars for Denny Hamlin and Matt Kenseth and, by proxy, Martin Truex Jr. — and that rapport among the five is part of why JGR is the first organization to advance two drivers to the final four in the same year.

The strength of JGR is its teamwide communication, where nothing is a secret. Everything is an open book. Drivers share chassis setups, and crew chiefs instant message during races about strategies, even if by doing so comes at the expense of their betterment — an ethos stressed by Toyota, JGR’s engine supplier that also has a heavy hand in guiding the team’s overall operation.

JGR and Toyota have won 30 of 72 races over the past two years, a run that includes seven straight victories in NASCAR’s four major events and Busch taking the 2015 Sprint Cup title. Further testament to the potency of the JGR-Toyota combination is that the carmaker is certain to end Chevrolet’s 13-year reign as manufacturer champion on Sunday.

“This is our 10th year in [Sprint Cup] competition, and we look at that manufacturers’ championship as for our family,” said Toyota Racing Development President David Wilson. “It’s very personal and really resonates on a global basis with our parent company. We’re tremendously proud, and the big thing is every one of those drivers have contributed.

“It truly is a family.”

Of course, the competitiveness breeds inevitable inner-team complexities that has at times tested the organization’s goodwill. When those situations arise, JGR’s namesake leans on his experience as a three-time Super Bowl-winning head coach to suppress any lingering problems.

And on more than occasion this year, Gibbs has had to play the role of mediator. There was the season-opening Daytona 500 when Hamlin defied team orders to make a winning pass of Kenseth coming to the checkered flag. Then there was Edwards shoving Busch aside on the final lap to take the win at a race in April.

The heightened intensity of the Chase for the Sprint Cup only increased the rash of run-ins amongst the JGR contingent. Most notably, Kenseth and Busch were upset about how Hamlin repeatedly blocked them during last month’s race at Martinsville Speedway, allowing Hendrick Motorsports’ Johnson to pull away and win, securing a spot in the Chase finale.

“Our cars are so good, I fully expected us to be racing against each other more often than not,” Wilson said. “And there have been some instances where we’re racing each other and we let Kevin [Harvick] or Jimmie take advantage of it. And you ask yourself, ‘If he hadn’t been doing that and we had some team order where whomever was closest let him go for the win, would’ve that changed the outcome?’ I don’t know.

“What I respect is that we didn’t have those conversations. Did it cause some tensions? Absolutely. But it was the right way to go racing within our family.”

That incident prompted Gibbs to call a drivers-only meeting for Busch, Edwards, Hamlin, and Kenseth to collectively review the circumstances and come to a mutual understanding. But while they left the meeting on the same page, it didn’t change the fact that by Johnson winning it assured JGR couldn’t exclusively fill out the championship bracket.

Busch and Edwards are Chase finalists, however, which presents a new set of challenges for the “united Toyota” philosophy: How do teammates who lean on one another for support provide that assistance while also trying to win a championship, NASCAR’s ultimate prize?

The answer is that nothing changes from the approach that got Busch and Edwards to South Florida with a shot at the title.

During their weekly competition meeting on Tuesday, crew chiefs Adam Stevens (Busch) and Dave Rogers (Edwards) agreed to continue sharing everything throughout the weekend leading up to Sunday. The teams would confer after qualifying and after each of the three practice sessions, similar to what occurred in all 35 races throughout the season.

Gibbs didn’t know the accord would continue into the weekend. He said on Friday: “Both of them want this in the worst way, and they’re going to compete. They’re not sharing a lot of stuff. It’s going to be up to them individually.”

When told on Friday afternoon what their boss’s comments were, Busch and Edwards offered not only a rebuke, but also an example of their solidarity.

“Did you know we weren’t sharing?” Edwards asked Busch.

“No,” Busch responded.

“Yeah, me either,” Edwards said.

“Joe’s not in our meetings,” Busch said. “Don’t listen to Joe.”

But when a championship is on the line, even teamwork has its limits. So when the green flag waves on Sunday, Busch and Edwards will cease to cooperate.

“We’ll go into Sunday every man for himself,” Busch said.