Carl Edwards finds himself on the top cream of the best drivers of the modern era to never have won a NASCAR Cup Series championship despite having the caliber to do so and coming ridiculously close on multiple occasions. But do the 44-year-old Columbia native’s achievements warrant him a Hall of Fame induction someday?
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Edwards has been nominated to enter the celebrated NASCAR Hall of Fame thrice now (Classes of 2021, 2023, and 2024) and looked over every single time. While reasons can be provided to support him not being favored, the stats that he put up on the board tell a different story. The dominant 2011 season (26 top-10s, 19 top-5s, 1 win) in which he lost the championship in tiebreaker to Tony Stewart is one in a long list of examples.
Over his 444 starts in the Cup Series for Roush Fenway Racing and Joe Gibbs Racing, he brought in 28 victory lane visits including wins in the Coca-Cola 600 and Southern 500. He finished runner-up twice in the top tier (2008 and 2011). He also won the 2007 Xfinity Series championship and finished in the top two for five straight years (38 Wins).
Since he made his debut in 2004 for Jack Roush, Edwards won almost everything there is to win in NASCAR, save a Cup Series championship.
The elusive title could’ve potentially guaranteed that he would have backflipped into the Hall by now considering his numbers and the love that he had from fans.
The closest that Carl Edwards came to winning a Cup Series championship
The 2005 season was just his maiden full-time year in the Cup Series and Edwards already hit the ground running. He became the first person to win both the Busch and the Cup Series races at Atlanta on the same weekend that year. He went on to score three more wins throughout the season and ended his run with an average finish of 13.97.
As fate would have it, he got his first sting by a tiebreaker after losing the second spot in the driver standings to Greg Biffle.
Having said that, the 2011 season would turn out to be the one to remember him by. Driving the #99 Ford of Roush, he collected 2403 points over the 36 races in the schedule. Unfortunately for him, Tony Stewart did the same too. Stewart had tied Edwards’ points total after winning in the season finale, forcing NASCAR to give him the title based on the five wins he posted in the year as against the sole win of Edwards.
Five years after the incident Edwards announced his retirement from racing in 2017.
