Kickin' It With Carl: The Sprint dip and downforce troubles

Carl Edwards currently sits in 6th place for the Sprint Cup standings -- 523 points behind leader Tony Stewart. Todd Warshaw/Getty Images

Carl Edwards has agreed to do a biweekly diary Q&A with SI.com this season. Here's the latest edition of Kickin' It With Carl.

SI.com: Certainly, Pocono didn't work out the way you wanted to. Talk about your struggles there en route to an 18th place finish.

Carl Edwards: Pocono was going really well, at first. There was one point where I thought we had a real good chance to win or run second to Denny [Hamlin]. But the double-file restarts ... that's the worst my car has performed in that situation yet. So, we had to go back and look at if there was something that was going on with our setups, something I was doing driving-wise, or our strategy. The end result was bad, though.

SI.com: If you had gotten up in clean air, would that have helped?

Edwards: Yes. The first restart, I thought, 'Hey I just need to get my act together. I'm just not doing my job here.' But by the third restart, I thought, 'Man, maybe there's something that we've got under the setup that just won't let it run well in a pack.'

After talking to the rest of my teammates and stuff, I feel like definitely our cars were much better in clean air. They had a lot of the same troubles. Matt [Kenseth] didn't. Matt was pretty good ... but the rest of my teammates were struggling a lot. So, that was something new for me; usually, I look at those restarts as an opportunity to gain spots. Instead, we lost a ton.

SI.com: Just six weeks ago, you were a second-place car capable of challenging for the win. What changed in such a short amount of time that threw you off?

Edwards: That's something I don't think a whole lot of people understand. Nothing changed except for the competition. Everyone, all their setups evolved. If you take the car that won at Pocono and you come back with the same car in six weeks, you might run fifth with it. It's just that people learn things. They get faster. They get better. It's an example of how tough the sport is.

SI.com: Ford hasn't had some of the same financial struggles as some of their counterparts in the series (Chevy and Dodge). Despite that, there have been several tracks this year where Fords have just been plain out to lunch compared to the rest of the field (none of them finished in the top 10 at Pocono). What is missing amongst the Fusion brand that the rest of the manufacturers don't have?

Edwards: My gut says nothing. Obviously, I'm really close to it, and I don't want there to be a problem. I really do believe we're fine though, we just ... if you look at the history of every team, almost every team you go through peaks and troughs, and that's what I've been telling people.

Look, I wish more than anything I had five wins this year and we were leading the points. We were good enough to do that last year, and I truly believe we're just in a trough of performance based on the way the sport goes. If you look at the beginning of the year, Roush actually started strong. Matt won the first two races, and then we had three cars to beat at Texas, and then we started to fade to mediocrity. Now, other than Chicago, I think we've really come back pretty well.

Looking ahead, I think when we go back to these places like Atlanta and California, we're going to find out where we stand. Right now, it's just this race to find the most grip and the most downforce. It just keeps evolving with this car, but it takes time to catch up. I really feel like we're closing the gap, though. There are times in the last couple of years where we had that edge, so we just have to ride it out, get it back, and then enjoy it when we have it.

But we can't self-destruct. We can't start fighting within the team and stuff like that.

SI.com: One thing that's been on the drawing board in terms of improvements is the new FR9 engine from Ford. Can you give us an update on when we might see you use it out on the race track?

Edwards: I think that it's going to be good. I've heard rumblings that we'll get to run that sometime before the year's over. Doug Yates says that he has very high hopes for it, and any momentum that we can get is going to be good.

You know, I've been in the sport for five years now, and I'm telling you, this year is 100 percent more competitive than five years ago when I started. It's tough. I look at some of the races, when I got done with the race -- Phoenix was one -- I don't remember where I finished, but I remember walking to my motorhome and thinking to myself, 'I can't remember the last time I raced that hard.' Almost all of the races have been like that.

Before, if you had a fast enough car, you could be comfortable to a certain degree and relax a little bit. Now, I don't ever see that happening again. Things are more competitive than ever.

SI.com: Besides the double-file restarts at Pocono, much of the race consisted of single-file racing. You've been such a big fan of the new car, but what's causing these types of problems at the bigger tracks: the car or the track itself?

Edwards: I have an opinion on how to solve the problem of the aero push and single-file racing at big tracks. I don't know if it's right, but I'll give it to you. Anytime you rely on downforce, you are inherently creating a situation where the car following other cars may have less downforce because of the disturbed air from the front car. The only way to get rid of the problem of having an aero push or not being able to close up to a guy's bumper on an intermediate track is to do everything you can to get rid of downforce. The rules have to be written so that the cars don't have it; then Goodyear, with a car with less downforce, could possibly make a tire that just has more mechanical grip. You'd be racing like we race at short tracks. You'd be racing the grip of the track and not the air going over the top of the car and under the car.

So, to me the direction NASCAR I feel like should go is less downforce. I do think NASCAR did a really, really smart thing with the new (Car of Tomorrow) by taking away a bunch of the parameters on the body that you can change. So now, all the teams have almost the same amount of downforce. That's a great first step. But now ... they need to start taking it away. If I don't have downforce to begin with, I can't possibly lose any when I come up behind a guy. So, I think that you'd see some very, very close racing at these tracks that you don't see now.

That car is a great thing. The looks of it have grown on me. The idea of it is perfect. The type of rules and setup that they have right now is what every short track racer in America dreams of: to be able to go to the track and know that you're coming with the same equipment as everyone else. That's what makes it more of a sport and less of a spectacle. So, that's good.