Edwards searching for first win of ‘09

FORT WORTH, Texas | Carl Edwards has found a way to try to mask the frustration of his winless NASCAR Sprint Cup season.

“It’s not that we haven’t had no wins this season, it’s just that we’ve had nine wins over the last two,” Edwards said. “That sounds a lot better.”

That still doesn’t erase that very noticeable zero in 2009.

After winning a series-high nine races last season - “That was an amazing year,” Edwards said, almost smiling at the memory - he was considered by many as the preseason favorite to unseat three-time defending champion Jimmie Johnson.

Instead, Johnson heads into Sunday’s race at Texas Motor Speedway, the eighth in the 10-race Chase for the Sprint Cup, closing in on an unprecedented fourth consecutive championship.

Edwards would just like to win a race and try to build some momentum for next season.

“Everybody was so pumped and voted us to win the championship and everybody was on board, but I knew in the back of my mind that things can go great or they can go bad, and no amount of speculation can affect that,” Edwards said. “Yeah, it’s frustrating. But I know how cruel this sport can be.”

And how good.

When Edwards got to the 1 1/2-mile, high-banked track last November, he already had seven wins. He made it eight when he drove his No. 99 Ford to Victory Lane by a comfortable margin after gambling on fuel to complete the first two-race season sweep in Texas - and become the first three-time winner there. He won again in the finale two weeks later at Homestead to finish 69 points behind Johnson.

Without a wreck at Talladega and an ignition problem at Charlotte in consecutive Chase races, for finishes of 29th and 33rd, Edwards probably would have been able to end Johnson’s title streak last year.

The luck has been no better this year, even though the Roush Fenway team got started with Matt Kenseth being the first driver in 12 years to win the first two races of a season and Edwards made the Chase again.

“We were at the top of our game last year and didn’t manage to make the improvements and didn’t manage to find the next new thing that we needed this year, and that left us with a disappointing year,” owner Jack Roush said. “It’s just a cycle of things. … Hopefully, next year we’ll be back on top.”

After Kenseth’s two victories, Roush didn’t win again until Jamie McMurray won at Talladega last weekend.

Only Johnson (13) and Kyle Busch (12) have more than Edwards’ nine victories over the past two seasons.

Busch is racing in all three of NASCAR’s national series this weekend at Texas. He’s two-thirds of the way to his Texas trifecta by winning the truck race Friday night and dominating the Nationwide race on Saturday.

With a 184-point lead over Mark Martin, Johnson needs only to average a 10th-place finish over the last three races — or 11th if he leads at least one lap in every race — to clinch the championship. Johnson has an average finish of 3.4 in the seven Chase races so far, finishing in the top 10 in all of them.

“I’m still trying to race as if we’re behind in points,” Johnson said. “I feel if we start focusing on an average position where we need to finish, do some things that are different, we will set ourselves up for a problem. … If we can go out and outrun the 24 [Jeff Gordon] and the 5 [Martin] the next two weeks, we’ll set [clinching the title] into our minds then. Right now, I’m just trying to keep blinders on and stay focused on maximum points.”