Edwards positioned as Sprint Cup's driver to beat

Drivers Elliott Sadler, his brother Hermie, Kasey Kahne and a few other NASCAR fellas were sitting around Sadler's motor home Thursday afternoon on Phoenix International Raceway's infield, shooting the bull and eating chicken.

Boom! The motor home rocked and swayed.

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Sadler and his buddies ran to the window to figure out what had happened. A Ford pickup had smacked into the side of Sadler's home on wheels, damaging the side pullout.

"I was like, 'Did he just hit this bus?' " Sadler asked.

The culprit of Bad Driving 101? NASCAR Sprint Cup's top wheelman through seven races, Carl Edwards.

Sadler, not about to let Edwards off the hook, rubbed it in.

"You've won three out of (seven) races this year, you're making us look stupid on Sundays," he said. "How do you back into a bus that's 40-foot long?"

Thursday's fender-bender is one of the few driving mistakes Edwards has made this season. After last Sunday's dominating win in the Samsung 500 at Texas, the driver of the No. 99 Roush Fenway Ford is widely recognized by his peers as NASCAR's top gun heading into today's Subway Fresh Fit 500 at PIR.

"Yeah, the way things have started off, the No. 99 is certainly the team to beat," two-time defending Cup champion Jimmie Johnson said. "They've set a very high mark for the start of the season, and we're all trying to catch up."

That's mighty high praise for a guy just ninth in the Sprint Cup points standings, 184 points behind leader Jeff Burton (1,065) of Richard Childress Racing. If not for a 100-point penalty for a missing oil tank cover incurred after his win in Las Vegas on March 2, and an engine failure in Atlanta the next Sunday (he finished 42nd), Edwards very well could have the points lead to go along with his season-leading three victories.

"They've been the best car on 1 1/2, 2-mile race tracks. That's saying a lot. We run a lot of mile-and-a-half, two-mile race tracks," Burton said. "At times there have been races where nobody can run with them ... and that's hard to do at this level."

Edwards' rise began to develop last season.

After splashing onto the NASCAR scene in 2005 with four victories in his first full Cup season, the young driver from Missouri suffered a sophomore slump, going winless in 2006 and losing crew chief Bob Osborne in personnel shuffling at Roush Fenway.

In 2007, he had a full season to get reacclimated with Osborne as his crew chief, and he ended a 52-race winless streak by posting three wins during the campaign. He also won the Busch/Nationwide Series championship.

Edwards carried that momentum into 2008 and also benefited from the Roush organization showing great improvement in developing its Car of Tomorrow last year and during the offseason.

"Roush last year showed they were moving in the right direction and had a lot of speed," Johnson said. "I thought maybe the No. 17 (Matt Kenseth) would come out of the gate and be the lead driver and team at Roush, but it's turned out to be the No. 99."

After a 19th-place showing in the Daytona 500 to start the season, Edwards rattled off wins in Fontana, Calif., and Las Vegas. In last Sunday's victory in Texas, Edwards led the final 106 laps, often looking like the class of the 43-car field.

"I feel like I've got the best car out there right now, and I've just got to drive it the best I can," Edwards said. "The way it's going so far, if I do my job right and communicate to the guys, we've got a really fast race car."

Edwards believes he'll only get better and faster once Osborne returns May 3 from a six-race suspension tied to the oil tank lid infraction.

"Man, I can't wait till he gets back," Edwards said. " You don't know what you got, till it's gone, is the saying. I didn't realize how much relationship we had built on the radio, how efficient our communication was."

While he's been strong on 1 1/2- and 2-mile tracks, Edwards also has proven he's no slouch on shorter tracks, like Phoenix's mile oval. He won the pole at PIR for last November's Checker Auto Parts 500, and he's had four top-10 finishes in seven races at the Avondale track. Edwards qualified third for today's race, and will start behind Ryan Newman and his old buddy, Sadler.

That fact didn't seem to concern Sadler despite Thursday's crash.

"He's good goin' fast, forward, but I don't really know about him backin' out anywhere," he said.

Sadler said Edwards apologized and agreed to pay for damages to his motor home.

"We're getting it appraised," Sadler added. "He's won three races this year, so the appraisal's going to be pretty high."

Subway fresh fit 500

5:30 p.m. today, Phoenix International Raceway, Channel 10