Instead of traveling far distances between the Sprint Cup Series track of Infineon Raceway in California and the Nationwide Series track of Road America in Wisconsin, Carl Edwards has chosen to only focus on the Sprint Cup Series race this weekend.
The decision comes very late in the week - Friday to be exact - following the first practices of the weekend for both of NASCAR's top two series.
Since NASCAR does not score Nationwide Series points for the Sprint Cup Series regulars, there has been much discussion of whether it is truly worth it for Sprint Cup drivers to run the full Nationwide schedule.
Billy Johnson, who was scheduled to practice the car for Edwards in the first place, will be the driver of the number 60 car for Saturday's Nationwide race. Johnson was first fastest in the opening practice for the Nationwide Series this weekend.
"I think Billy will do a great job," said Edwards. "In the end, this puts us in the best position with both teams to perform well, so I'm grateful to be able to make the change and I feel like we are doing the right thing. I think this shows you just how much our sponsors and our team are able to work together and change things on the fly," Edwards stated. "The original plan was for me to miss all of practice in our Sprint Cup car in Sonoma on Saturday, but literally as we finished practice today we found out that Billy Johnson was P1 in the Fastenal Ford Mustang at Road America. We also felt like as a team that we needed more practice on the Cup side, so I called the (President and) CEO of Fastenal - Will Oberton - and without any hesitation, he said do what you need to do to have the best result and we are behind you 100 percent. It just shows that Fastenal is truly behind our whole Roush Fenway team, and we have a great relationship to be able to make this change."
This will be the first Nationwide race without Edwards since June 12, 2005 at Nashville, according to Sporting News.
Quotes from Roush Fenway Racing
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