NASCAR Hall of Famer says he quit the sport after championship dream was 'snatched'
Carl Edwards accused NASCAR of throwing cautions to make the 2016 Championship race more interesting, which would go on to cost him his 'dream'
Carl Edwards was inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame earlier this year after carving out a legendary Cup Series career that saw him visit Victory Lane 28 times. However, despite coming close, Edwards never won the Cup Series Championship and quit the sport he loved after having his dream "snatched" from him in 2016.
The 45-year-old suffered heartbreak at Homestead-Miami, where he was leading the Championship race until cautions threw his position out the window. Jimmie Johnson would go on to win his last of seven Cup Series titles, and Edwards has claimed that NASCAR threw cautions to make the race more interesting, therefore meddling with the trajectory of the result.
"I wanted to win that championship," Edwards said in an emotional chat on the 'Dale Jr Download' podcast. "It's everything I've worked for, that's it, that's the prize you want more than anything in the world, and yes, I believe that was snatched."
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Edwards continued: "I'm going to put everything in my life second, and I am gonna go start at Daytona, and I'm gonna drive the hell out of this race car like I've been doing for 13/14 years and I'm gonna run this thing all the way to the end and give everything I've got, another year of my life, and then I'm gonna get to Homestead at the end of 2017, I'm gonna do everything just right and they're gonna throw a caution with five to go and we're gonna put all this on a restart?"
"There was something about that caution. It was like the final thing to say, damn it. You're not supposed to win this thing. This is not supposed to happen.
"And I know NASCAR was throwing those cautions to make it more exciting; that's a fact. And I specifically talked to people about it, and that's that, and we're all in this sport to entertain, and they were trying their hardest at the time."
Nonetheless, Edwards graciously took his place in NASCAR's Hall of Fame despite feeling hard done by. Edwards was involved in a wreck following a restart that handed Johnson the title. For Dale Earnhardt Jr., it was also an emotional day.
Johnson's seventh championship tied him with Dale Earnhardt Sr. and "The King" Richard Petty as the most decorated champions in NASCAR history. "I look out the window of the bus, and Jimmy Johnson's going into turn three with the lead on the final lap, and I thought, 'Jimmy Johnson's gonna win seven championships and tie my dad and Richard Petty,'" Earnhardt Jr. said.
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"There was just a lot going on that night but I don't know that I would believe you if you said that didn't have some adverse effect on you. You had raced your whole life trusting that the green flag would drop and the checkered flag would end it and that there would be nothing in between that wasn't pure," Earnhardt Jr. added.
"And between the tie with Tony that was there was no shenanigans going on there, but between how difficult that must have been to sort of go by go get passed right this, you know, this questionable yellow, you had given everything you had to the sport you'd been a good shepherd.
"You had been an outstanding citizen in the industry. You know you've done everything right. I felt like I was sitting there watching this break you entirely the way that, no, that's the wreck that you had in the turn one was vicious.
"I don't know of another crash that I've seen you go through that was more vicious, just a bam bam bam a bang bang bang, you know, and the way you reacted when you got out of the car, I saw in you you know, your reaction to go to the pit box and say whatever you said hey go win the championship or whatever it was just the way you instantly reacted it was almost like you didn't know what to do."
