For several months, the question has not been if but when it would be announced that Carl Edwards would shift from Roush Fenway Racing to Joe Gibbs Racing.
On Tuesday, we’ve finally had that question answered.
Edwards has been officially confirmed as driver of Gibbs’ new fourth entry, the No. 19 ARRIS Toyota Camry. He’ll join Gibbs holdovers Denny Hamlin and Kyle Busch, and reunite with former Roush Fenway teammate Matt Kenseth.
The No. 19 falls perfectly in-between Busch’s No. 18 and Kenseth’s No. 20. In recent years, Gibbs’ part-time fourth car carried the No. 81 in the selected races it was entered.
ARRIS Group Inc., a global innovator in IP, video and broadband technology, is a sponsor new to NASCAR and will have a presence both on Edwards’ Cup car for 17 races and also for rising Mexican star Daniel Suarez, who will compete in the full 2015 Nationwide Series (under its new name) and selected Camping World Truck Series races.
During Tuesday’s press conference, Joe Gibbs said the remaining 19 races for Edwards’ Cup car will be announced shortly, but most deals are done. He said he was “thrilled” to have companies coming to JGR.
For Edwards, while he reiterated the focus will remain on closing out strongly with RFR, he expressed his excitement with the switch.
“This is a huge day for me. It means the world to me to have this opportunity, means a lot to have Denny, Kyle, Matt here and to be a part of this organization,” Edwards said. “It’ll be nice to finally be able to talk about this.
“Thanks to Joe and JD (Gibbs) making this possible. For AARIS, for Bob (Stanzione, Chairman/CEO) and his company to be this big right out of the gate, is huge. It’s a huge day for me and my career.”
Joe Gibbs said it was important for the timing to be right to expand to a fourth team. Most will be staffed internally, most likely including a crew chief, although no personnel announcements were made here.
“Over the years people kept asking us when we’d be adding us a third,” he said. “We added the third (in 2005), but we were a big team, it took us a long time to go to three. We want our vision and everything we’re doing with our three, so it had to be the right sponsor and right driver.
“We’re very careful with it. Mainly we were able to get Carl and ARRIS. Everything we do is team-wise. Everyone said this would be the right time. Carl brings more resources for us. We’re competing against four (cars) or more, and all we want to do is win every race.”
Stanzione elaborated on ARRIS’ decision to enter and go big.
“It’s somewhat of a coming out party for ARRIS. We’re in millions of homes, but we’re a brand that’s not that well known,” he said.
“When we just asked ‘who’s heard of us,’ maybe 4 hands went up. And that’s the reason we needed to get out there. We provide high speed data, voice and video communications to service providers. To bring you entertainment, to allow you to surf the web, you may have our product but not know it. So we wanted to get the brand out there.”
More will follow on MotorSportsTalk throughout the day on the rest of this announcement.