With a whopping 852-point lead atop the Busch Series drivers standings, Carl Edwards could easily skip a couple of the season's 13 remaining races and still win the championship.
And considering the Ford driver runs in both the NASCAR Nextel Cup and Busch Series, some might expect the 27-year-old native of Columbia, Mo., to look for opportunities to relax during his 71-race schedule.
Think again.
"I'm telling you, it's part of who [racing drivers] are, we like to race cars," Edwards, sixth overall in the Nextel Cup standings, said yesterday. "If I can go run a dirt race with my dad and my little brother at a beautiful dirt track somewhere and get to try to win a race, it's going to be really hard not to do that.
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"You know, personally, I don't really get tired. I think it's hardest on the people who do all the stuff for the drivers. The guys who do all my public relations, my travel, planning, the season gets really long for them. The crew guys essentially work seven days a week, 18 hours a day."
Edwards will be one of seven Cup regulars flying back and forth between the Pocono Raceway in Long Pond, Pa., where the Pennsylvania 500 will be run on Sunday, and the 4.361-kilometre Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve in Montreal, which will be host to the 74-lap NAPA Auto Parts 200 Busch Series race tomorrow. The others are Busch champion Kevin Harvick, David Ragan, Jeff Burton, 2002 Busch champion Greg Biffle, Robby Gordon and David Reutimann.
The Busch Series is one step below NASCAR's top-tier Nextel Cup. The main difference is that the Cup engine tops out at about 850 horsepower, 100 more than that of the Busch car. The Montreal race is the Busch circuit's second venture outside the United States, after Mexico City was added in 2005.
It started well for the Montreal fans who watched popular Patrick Carpentier from nearby La Salle, Que. He put up the best time in his first official NASCAR session in yesterday's morning practice.
But Carpentier left the Île-Notre-Dame track with the fifth best effort of the day after three-time Busch winner Ron Fellows of Mississauga topped the second practice session in his No. 33 Chevrolet. Fellows's time of 1 minute 43.198 seconds was 0.7 seconds quicker than Carpentier's morning effort.
"The surface is the same as I remember," said Fellows, who drives for Harvick's Busch outfit. "It's quite slick and not a lot of grip. It's a bit tricky. You are going to see lots of action here. You've got big heavy cars, high approach speeds and long braking zones. So you are going to see lots of side-by-side stuff here and there's going to be some bumping and rubbing because a lot of the chicanes are single file. I'm looking forward to it."
The series couldn't have picked a better venue for Busch's first north of the border swing, Fellows said.
"This is an awesome spot and a great city and I think it's very fitting that we have the inaugural NASCAR Busch race at the Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve," Fellows said. "Let's hope this becomes a fixture and let's hope that one of the Canadians is waving the Maple Leaf on the podium Saturday afternoon."
Carpentier will also pull double duty this weekend, making his Busch Series debut in the No. 22 Dodge and driving his regular SAMAX Motorsport prototype in the Grand-American Rolex Sports Car Series today.
"Experience is going to play a little bit and there are some guys in there who really know their stuff and there's a learning curve for me," Carpentier said of the Busch Series race. "I'm trying to shorten it, but we'll see how it goes in the race."
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