Edwards starting to see light at end of the tunnel

FORT WORTH, Texas -- Carl Edwards has finally created some light at the end of the tunnel that his 2009 season's become.

Edwards has done it with strong performances in practice and qualifying this weekend at Texas Motor Speedway, capped with a second-place effort in Saturday's Happy Hour for the Dickies 500.

Edwards is almost ready to look at small things such as competing well in practice, as victories.

He kicked off his weekend by running fifth in opening practice, just .151 seconds off the pace of leader Clint Bowyer. Edwards then qualified sixth on the fast, 1.5-mile track where he's logged three consecutive top-10 finishes, including sweeping last year's two events.

"We've worked pretty hard and I was real happy with the pickup there," he said after qualifying. "We're competitive. I feel like we can hold our own against these guys.

"The car is good, that's the fastest we've been in a long time, so we'll see how it goes. It's 500 miles and there will be a lot of things that change throughout the race, but it feels nice. We've got a good starting spot and a fast race car, so that's big.

"You've just got to race hard the whole time. That's all we can do. The guy that wins this thing is gonna have to race hard the whole time."

Three guys who shine on intermediate tracks: David Reutimann, Tony Stewart and Juan Montoya, were quickest in Saturday's first practice. Ominously, championship leader Jimmie Johnson ran 49 laps -- second-high in the session -- and was quickest in Happy Hour. Edwards ran 34 laps and was one of three Roush Fenway drivers in the top 10 in final practice.

Now for Edwards all that's left is to break out of the doldrums. Edwards could've imagined this happening -- since there's a precedent in his career -- but he didn't expect to come to Texas for Sunday's race without having won a race in 2009.

After all, it's the 34th event of the season and Edwards led the league in victories a year ago, with nine in his No. 99 Roush Fenway Racing Ford.

But beside himself is exactly where he finds his situation.

"It's really frustrating," Edwards said. "I don't know how many wins we had at this point last year, seven or something, but we had nine wins last year. That was an amazing year.

"I've kind of tried to think of it differently. It's not that we haven't had any wins this season; it's just that we've had nine wins over the last two. That sounds a lot better, but I'd like to have 10 or 12 wins over the last two seasons by the end of this year -- but it is frustrating."

A season ago, Edwards won six of the last eight races in the Cup and Nationwide series as he chased the respective champions, Johnson and Bowyer. It leaves him shaking his head about his current 33-race winless streak in Cup and five in Nationwide, where he's actually won four times.

"You go out and you do the very best you can," Edwards said. "I feel like I'm doing sometimes a better job in the race car and we're not getting the same results, but that's what makes this sport tough. The good times are good, the bad times you've just got to dig in and work."

Edwards has experienced peaks and valleys in his career, which began on the Cup side with a bang in August 2004, when he stepped into Jeff Burton's Roush Racing car. He won four times the next season, but then was winless in 2006 and almost fell out of the top 10 in the standings.

"I know the possibilities," Edwards said. "[The] 2005 and 2006 [seasons] were a lot like this, where we had huge expectations. The media is so nice to me. 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.

"It's just how hard you're working and whether you're working on the right things so, yeah, it's frustrating but I know how cruel this sport can be."