by Darrell Waltrip

Updated: April 7, 2008, 10:06 PM EST 256 comments

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The cars back then were right off the showroom floor. They never were intended to be race cars. We turned them into race cars. They didn't handle well. They didn't have a lot of aerodynamics. To be successful you had to "man up," and everybody couldn't do it.

That's why you only had 10 or 12 cars on the lead lap at the end of the day. Those cars were evil. They were hard to drive and it was hard work. It was physically demanding. Sure, we complained about the cars. We talked about them being hard to drive, and guess what? They gave us power steering. We complained about how hot it was inside the cars and how they were so hard to drive, and guess what? They gave us Gatorade.

I once told Bill France that the races were too long. He looked at me as serious as could and said, "DW, maybe you should look for another job." You know, back during that time, the same guys won all the races. You would go complain to whomever and they would tell you, "Well, maybe you just aren't working hard enough."

My point is, it's never been easy. It never will be easy. Racing is hard. It's hard work and takes a huge commitment. It should never be about the car every time it doesn't go the way you want it to. It's always been about being better than the other guy. It doesn't matter how much better your car is. Are you better than the competition? Did you beat everybody else no matter what the conditions.

It's called racing. Wow, what a novel concept.

My point is, Sunday we had a camera in Carl Edwards car. That boy worked his butt off. He was on top of that steering wheel for the entire 500 miles. He was focused and looked like he was running at the Eldora dirt track.

The car was slipping and sliding. He was turning it right and turning it left. But he was getting around that racetrack and, more importantly, he was getting around there better than anyone else. And you know what he worried about all day? I don't think he mentioned the handling of the car. He just hoped and prayed his engine wouldn't blow up like at Atlanta, where he should have won that race but his engine failed.

So Carl Edwards' only concern Sunday wasn't about how hot it was, or how the car was driving or anything else. He was worried about, "Am I better than everybody else? Will my engine last and am I going to be able to win this race?"

Here's something else that I think the other drivers better take notice of. Carl is in great shape, and there's no doubt about that. The bike he rides every morning at 6 a.m. is called a mountain bike. Until everybody else realizes it's not all about the car, well, ol' Carl will stay head and shoulders above everybody else.

Imagine that.

Oh by the way

Even before the race on Sunday, there were a lot of unhappy car owners, drivers and crew members.

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Kyle Petty and that whole crowd comes to mind. There is a lot going on there.

Chip Ganassi gets on the radio and says things have got to change in his organization. I think you will see a driver change or two in the next couple days.

There are just a lot of teams searching for answers, and sometimes I wonder if they are looking in all the wrong places. The No. 45 team, for example, made a driver change and that didn't solve their problems.

Some of these teams are struggling and have gotten off to a poor start. Part of that frustration is coming from this new car. It's so hard to figure out what to do that it's putting a lot of pressure on these teams, drivers and crew chiefs to get their performance up. Unfortunately, a lot of them are just lost right now about what to do, and that's unfortunate.

That's the facts of life in NASCAR racing today.