“Never Said Another Word to Me” – Tony Stewart’s Attempt at Psyching Out Carl Edwards Led to Extreme Bitterness During Heated Championship Battle

It was 2011 and Carl Edwards had his eyes on the prize, the NASCAR Cup championship. But standing in his way was Tony Stewart, who eventually went on to win the title against the Roush Fenway Racing driver.

But while Smoke’s driving on the day had a lot to do with his win, he was laying seeds in his rival’s mind way before the green flag dropped.

This was something he opened up on in an interview from a couple of years ago.

Stewart described the “mind games” he was playing on Edwards on the media day as he showed up quite early, something very uncharacteristic for a person who claimed he’d be “late to my own funeral.” 

The Stewart-Haas Racing owner then remembered the chair incident with Edwards and Darrell Waltrip. There was a single chair on one side of the trophy and a couple on either side.

Waltrip was supposed to sit in the single chair, but Stewart took the seat. When asked to move, he simply replied, “I’m not moving…it’s my trophy.”

This made Edwards look at him “kinda funny” before laughing it off as the eventual winner insisted the trophy belonged to him.

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The Tony Stewart response, which left Carl Edwards speechless

Continuing on recalling the same media day, Tony Stewart described that his chair incident had left Carl Edwards feeling “uncomfortable.” After a long day of media, Stewart revealed that Edwards thought, “everything was just gonna get back to normal.”

This was followed by a “casual question,” to Stewart- “What are you gonna do on Monday?” 

For Smoke, it was indeed a casual question, but it was also “the last opportunity” for him to take one final shot at Edwards, make him even more uncomfortable, hit his confidence, and further the mind games.

“I said, I don’t know what you’re doing on Monday, I’m going to ESPN all day. That’s what the champion does, champion goes and does ESPN interviews all day on Monday,” Stewart recalled.

“And Carl (Edwards) never said another word to me.”

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