Edwards itching to win at Kansas, his home-area track

As NASCAR's Carl Edwards stormed to a third-place finish on Sunday at Dover, he made a bold proclamation.

"We're going to win Kansas," Edwards told his team over the radio.

It may not go down in history as a Joe Namath guarantee or a Muhammad Ali prediction, but Edwards isn't backing down from his declaration about this Sunday's Hollywood Casino 400 Sprint Cup race at Kansas Speedway.

"That's my plan," Edwards, of Columbia, Mo., said Wednesday. "You know why I want to win there: It's my home track. It would mean the world to me to win that race. I feel we've run well enough at these mile-and-a-halfs. I feel like personally I'm very, very motivated to win that race. I think my guys feel they can do the job on pit road.

"So, yeah, I was a little fired up after Dover. I hope we can come through with my prediction there."

Edwards arrives at Kansas tied for the lead in the Chase for the Sprint Cup with Kevin Harvick, though Harvick owns the tiebreaker based on his four wins this season, compared with Edwards' one.

But Harvick has struggled in the last two Chase races, posting finishes of 12th at New Hampshire and 10th at Dover, two 1-mile tracks. He was second at Chicago, which is a carbon copy of Kansas Speedway's 1.5 mile layout.

Edwards, meanwhile, is the only driver with top 10s in each of the three Chase races. He was fourth at Chicago and eighth at New Hampshire and might have won at Dover had he not been penalized for speeding on pit lane midway through a race he had dominated.

Though he hasn't won a Sprint Cup race since March 6 at Las Vegas, the third race of the season, Edwards has been a model of consistency. His 14 top-five finishes, 20 top-10 finishes and 10.4 average finish are the best in the Sprint Cup series.

"Some of that is luck," said Edwards, 32. "Some of that is bad luck on the other guys' part. But I do believe our team is as strong or stronger than it's ever been. "What we're doing right now is: We have good pit stops. We're qualifying better. Our teamwork is better. We've all matured as a group. I think all those things put us in a better position than we've ever been to win the championship.

"If we can just keep doing what we've been doing — we don't have a parts failure, we don't have any more of these penalties on pit road, mistakes by the driver, things like that — somebody is going to have to beat us. They're going to know we're there. Hopefully, we can keep the pressure on these guys."

In eight career Sprint Cup starts at Kansas Speedway, Edwards has yet to win, though he has six top 10s and came close in 2008 when he tried a memorable "banzai move" to try to pass Jimmie Johnson on the final lap but crashed into the wall and finished second.

"I do believe that the winner of the championship is going to win a race or two in the Chase," Edwards said. "You're going to have to run so well, you will win a race or two. We should have won at Dover. The more important thing is going to be the bad days.

"You're going to have guys run out of fuel or wreck and take themselves out of that group of guys that are all competing. It's going to slowly whittle itself to seven, six, five. By the end of the Chase, you're going to have four guys, three guys going into Homestead with a chance. Then it's going to be who doesn't have that bad race at Homestead."

While Edwards has won only one Sprint Cup race, he has won seven Nationwide events, including Saturday at Dover when he failed to stick the landing of his celebratory back flip on the high-banked Monster Mile.

Edwards is entered in Saturday's Kansas Lottery 300 at Kansas Speedway, and a win there may be a good warmup for Sunday.

"Running that Nationwide car at this race will help with my Cup race. I'm excited to be able to get that track time."