Carl Edwards Reveals the Earth-Shattering Contrast Joe Gibbs Provided Over NASCAR Behemoth

It’s late 2016, and Joe Gibbs couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Carl Edwards quit racing after being 15 laps away from the 2016 championship with Joe Gibbs Racing. Edwards was so close to making history, but he walked away, leaving Gibbs confused. Fans were sitting at home, trying to figure out why a NASCAR Hall of Famer ditched it all after switching teams in 2015. However, his decision to retire stemmed from wanting to spend more time with his family, and as he looks back, he reflects on the drastic change in environment at JGR that shaped his perspective on winning.

Carl Edwards started at Joe Gibbs Racing in 2015 after over a decade at Roush Racing, and it was a total change. He walks into his first meeting, expecting the same old routine. Instead, he meets Joe Gibbs, a guy with three Super Bowl wins and multiple NASCAR titles, the only one in both Halls of Fame. This switch from the leadership of Jack Roush was unexpected for him. “The best leaders are the ones who are paying a price,” Gibbs told The Athletic in 2019. “I’m going to be there first, I’m going to be there last and I’m going to go after it hard.” Carl Edwards felt that energy, but it was not what he was used to.

Carl Edwards is in awe of Joe Gibb’s leadership style

Carl Edwards started and spent a bulk of his career driving for Jack Roush and Roush Fenway Racing. He won the 2007 Busch (Xfinity) Series but faced heartbreak in the Cup Series. Edwards came close to winning two championships with Roush Racing, finishing 2nd in 2008 to Jimmie Johnson and 2nd on a race-wins tiebreaker to Tony Stewart in 2011. However, a move to Joe Gibbs Racing in 2015 was what everyone felt would finally get him that elusive championship. But what made JGR so special? It was all about Coach’s mentality.

Edwards juxtaposed Joe Gibbs’ approach to that of Jack Roush, highlighting the key differences that made each team so successful. Speaking to Dale Earnhardt Jr. on the Dale Jr. Download, Edwards said, “So anybody who’s been around Jack knows that he can build the shop, he can build the car, he can drive the car… he can do anything. And that’s how he’s built. He’s going to master every single piece, and he had his hand in every single thing.” However, a shift to JGR marked a change in approach that he had gotten used to, and he was pleasantly surprised.

Describing his time at JGR, Edwards recalls Gibbs walking into drivers’ meetings with a straightforward attitude. “Then you moved to Joe Gibbs Racing, and it blew my mind. Completely different,” Edwards said. “I remember Coach [Gibbs] came to one of our first meetings… He goes around and says, ‘You, Why didn’t you win?.. Then he’d just say, ‘Okay, cool, you didn’t win because of this, I don’t know anything about that.’ One time, he said, ‘I don’t know anything about tires. I don’t get it, I don’t know, I don’t need to know. You tell me what I need to do so that you can make these tires work the way you need them to.”

What Edwards is saying is that Joe Gibbs did not get in the way of the technical side of things, like Jack Roush did. Gibbs was solely focused on winning and how he could listen to the drivers and help them win. After all, Gibbs was originally an NFL coach, so his knowledge of cars is certainly limited, but he does know how to run a winning team. Edwards added, “He [Gibbs] gave up all the control and put it in the hands of others and then let them kind of run the ship and he just facilitated it. While Jack [Roush]… was the central computer, the mechanical brain behind everything.” Jack Roush’s background before his NASCAR days explains a lot about his leadership style.

Jack Roush was born in 1942 in Covington, Kentucky, worked at Ford in 1964, and won drag racing titles with Wayne Gapp in the ‘70s—NHRA, IHRA, AHRA. In ‘76, he started Roush Performance Engineering, and by ‘84, he won 24 championships in IMSA and SCCA, his Mustang taking 10 straight Rolex 24 races from ‘85 to ‘95, earning him a spot in the IMSA Hall of Fame. “Jack Roush, like I said, fought and clawed through not just a sport, but the actual technical aspects of it,” Edwards added. In ‘88, Jack Roush started Roush Racing and won two Cup Series Championships in 2003 and 2004 with Matt Kenseth and Kurt Busch, respectively.

Joe Gibbs is a different story. While Jack controls everything, Gibbs steps back. Jack’s the motor; Gibbs rides pit wall. But in the end, Carl Edwards took a part of each camp with himself. Now, as Edwards returns to the sport in a new vein, he reveals what made him change his mind, and it’s another case of letting him do it his way!

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Carl Edwards opens up on joining NASCAR’s broadcast booth

Carl Edwards is back in NASCAR but not behind the wheel, but in the booth. The Hall of Famer, who walked away from racing after the 2016 season, is set to join Amazon Prime Video as a studio analyst for five Cup Series races in 2025. He spilled the details on how it all came together during a SiriusXM NASCAR Radio chat.

Edwards said no to TV gigs for years. “I turned them all down,” he told Danielle Trotta and Jordan Bianchi. The grind of a full season didn’t fit his life as family comes first. He’s been focused on being a dad and husband. But Amazon’s offer was different: just five races, starting with the Coca-Cola 600 on May 25. “Five races made me think about it,” he said. It’s a light load, and that tipped the scales.

“I was in Hong Kong on this separate thing. And Randy Fuller said, ‘Hey, Amazon’s going to do some of these races. It’s five races and they want to talk to you.’ And it struck me at the time. I thought, man, five races, my kids are kind of getting into racing. My family is asking questions about what my career was like. Maybe this will be cool. So they said, Hey, we’ll fly out from LA. We’ll come visit you.” However, this was no normal meeting. It was a Carl Edwards day!

Edwards called them to LA and made them spend the whole day with him, accompanying Edwards to his jujitsu class and talking about everything apart from the technical aspect of things, and Amazon’s representatives loved it! The deal clicked. Amazon didn’t care about suits or stats; they wanted real talk for fans. That environment sold him and he’s not hiding trade secrets anymore. He’s ready to break down what’s really happening on the track.

Edwards isn’t racing again. He had already politely turned down Kyle Larson’s All-Star offer, but he’s pumped for this. “This sport’s a part of me,” he said, reflecting on his eight-year break. NASCAR welcomed him back, and now he’s got a mic, not a helmet. Fans will hear him unfiltered, starting at Charlotte. It’s a new lap for Carl, and he’s all in. Are you excited to see Edwards back in NASCAR? Let us know in the comments!