Indy isn't easy for Roush Fenway Racing's Carl Edwards
INDIANAPOLIS – Roush Fenway Racing’s Carl Edwards says Indianapolis Motor Speedway is one of the more difficult tracks to drive on the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series despite its simple layout.
Indy is a true oval, with long straightaways separating each end of the track. But since it is only slightly banked and yet 2.5 miles in length, Edwards says Indy is “a very difficult track technically.”
“I’ve come here and thought, ‘Boy, this is easy,’” Edwards said. “The car drives great. We’ve led laps and I’ve been really competitive, and I’ve come here and had cars that were just really difficult for me to run well. The engineers have a huge say in how the performance is on the race track, and then from a driver’s perspective, even when things are good it’s still a very technical race track.”
What makes it so difficult? A couple of things, Edwards said.
“Number one, the groove where you want to race is very narrow,” Edwards said. “You get this short, punctuating corners. There isn’t a lot of time to be in a corner working on somebody. The speeds are so high that if you do get close enough to someone in this first corner and you can’t complete a pass, you’re kind of in their wake and their turbulence and you can’t complete it in the next corner, so you really have to time where you’re gonna make your move so you can commit fully and get a pass made.
“A lot of times at this track you’ll catch a guy and you’ll initiate a pass or some way to overtake him and then you can’t get it done and you have to fall back and think about it and do it again. It’s a real technical race track in that way, and that’s what makes it tough.”
The four turns at Indy are identical, but that doesn’t make them easy.
“As a driver, assuming your car is great and that’s not an issue, you’re still driving in these corners over 200 miles per hour, and they look really sharp,” Edwards said. “It does not look like it’s gonna work out when you enter and you have to hit your marks perfectly here to put a good lap in. They talk about Turn 2 at Pocono, the tunnel turn, well we’ve got four of those here, and they’re all tough.”
Edwards has made four starts at Indianapolis, with a best finish of second last year.
