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Recently, NASCAR held an official test at Daytona International Raceway of the new car it will introduce next season for the Nationwide Series, and Carl Edwards, for one, likes what is being done.

Essentially, NASCAR will bring in the Pony car generation -- the Mustang and the Challenger -- to respectively replace Ford's Fusion and Dodge's Charger. (NASCAR asked Chevrolet to submit a Camaro but the company didn't want to mess with the car's lines in order to fit the template, so the Impala stays in the series. -Ed.)

Edwards, who drives the No. 99 Ford for Roush Fenway Racing in the NASCAR Sprint Cup series and the No. 60 RFR Ford in the Nationwide series, was part of the test at Daytona. And he came away impressed.

"The first thing is, for me to walk in the garage and to see all these really neat-looking race cars, they just look cool," Edwards said. "That Mustang looks great. I'm proud to be driving one.

"And out there on the racetrack, the thing that we complain about is the nose sliding off of the corners -- not enough front grip, it gets tight -- and they fixed all that because they are screaming loose. And it's exciting. It's really, really difficult right now to race very close and keep your car going the way you want it to go. So that's what we're struggling with -- tightening up the car, making it handle better.

"It just drives with a ton of front grip. It's pretty wild. The thing about that is that when it's difficult like that and it's dynamic, it's also going to make for a very exciting race. What I hope for is that it doesn't make it so hard to drive them around one another that there are just wrecks -- because the car snaps loose and stuff -- so we'll have to make sure we can get them tight enough that we can still race aggressively and not be at risk of disaster there.

"I think we're going to go run in a big pack here. I told all the fans out there they need to go stand up on top of the garage and watch this because it's going to be insane.

"Brendan Gaughan and I were talking -- it's like the 2003 truck race when it was my first one, and there were just a handful. So it's going to be pretty exciting."
The Daytona test, Edwards said, gave the drivers enough information to tell NASCAR bosses if any changes have to made for the cars to be faster, safer or both.
Afterwards he talked about the matter of the Ford teams being shut out so far this season in Sprint Cup racing. Edwards said that he has faith RFR will get it turned around.

"At Roush Fenway we just need to be better. We just need to be a little faster. That's what it boils down to. We've got great pit stops. We've got great team chemistry. We just have to be faster.

"And the thing that's a little bit frustrating about that, is that I believe Ford as a company, Ford as a car manufacturer, they're doing as well or better than anyone else, and they make the greatest cars on the road, and we have to work with them more closely and figure out what we're lacking here because we should be winning races.

"Matt Kenseth, Greg Biffle, the drivers that we have over here, are some of the best in the garage, I believe, and we should be winning more races."
But it's hard to feel too bad for Edwards and his teammates who, in spite of not visiting Victory Lane this season, are doing pretty well in the points battle.
Edwards sits comfortably in the top 12, as does Kenseth and Biffle. All three will certainly contend for post-season awards and all three should be contenders for the championship once the Chase gets underway in September.