Carl Edwards, driver of the No. 99 Office Depot Ford Fusion, is fifth in the point standings going into Sunday’s NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series race. He held his weekly Q&A session after Friday’s practice at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Office Depot Ford Fusion – MATT SAID TODAY THAT YOU TWO STILL HAVEN’T TALKED AND HE DOESN’T SEE A REASON. YOUR RESPONSE? “I guess all I can say about it is I’ve said the way things went down, I wish they hadn’t gone that way and I’ve apologized for it. My belief is that we should try to work it out. I called him. If he doesn’t want to, that’s his prerogative. He can do that.”

HE ALSO SAID IT WASN’T TRUE YOU GUYS HADN’T TALKED IN SIX MONTHS. “I’ve said what I said about that and that’s how I feel about it.”

SO YOU DON’T FEEL THERE’S BEEN A LOT OF INTERACTION? “I’ve already talked about that. That’s that.”

ARE YOU WORRIED ABOUT HOW FANS WILL PERCEIVE YOU NOW THAN HOW THEY DID BEFORE? “Let me make it very clear on the perception thing. I am a competitor. I am a fierce competitor. That’s why I’m here. As far as people’s perception of me or how I am personally, I’ve read some stuff or heard and some people are deeply misunderstanding what’s going on here. When I run well, I’m happy and I’m happy to be here. When things don’t go my way or I feel like someone is trying to take something from me, I’m going to stand up for myself. That’s just the way I was raised. That’s the way I am. That’s the way I’ve always been. That’s that.”

HE BACKED OFF ABOUT YOUR BEHAVIOR BEING ERRACTIC. IS THAT ONE QUOTE BEEN PART OF THE BIGGEST EXPLOSION OF THIS THING? “I think the whole deal is a little bit, I mean it’s kind of been blown up a little bit more than what it is. It’s two guys that were upset at each other and I believe I’ve been pretty consistent. I’m generally a very happy guy and when I’ve had trouble with someone or don’t believe that someone has been treating me right, I’ve gone and told them so. That’s pretty consistent.”

ARE YOU SURPRISED YOUR OTHER TEAMMATES KIND OF PILED ON? “I learned a lot this week. People don’t always understand what’s going on and what’s really happening, and I can say that I really learned how people felt about me which is nice because it definitely seems from what I’ve learned this week that a lot of people don’t mind walking around feeling a certain way about you and they don’t say how they feel until it’s popular to say it.”

MATT SAID HE WASN’T AWARE OF ANYTHING FESTERING OVER A PERIOD OF TIME? “The deal is Matt knows and I know what’s gone on between us. It’s really, I don’t believe, something that should play out in the media. It’s too bad it escalated into what happened there Sunday, but it’s competition.”

DO YOU THINK THERE’S RESENTMENT FROM THE TEAM BECAUSE OF ALL THE MAGAZINES AND OTHER THINGS YOU’VE DONE? “I’m not sure. You’d have to ask other people. I can tell you that I go out here and I do the very best I can. I’ve done that for a long time and that’s all I can say. The first person who hasn’t made a mistake or been angry and stood up for themselves, is welcome to come raise their hand and criticize me farther than I deserve, but that’s the way it’s gonna be, I guess.”

HE ALSO SAID HE WAS GLAD HE DIDN’T GET HIS BUTT KICKED. HOW CLOSE WERE YOU TO ACTUALLY PUNCHING HIM? “I was not going to punch Matt. I was just real angry at him at the time and I wanted to get rise out of him. I didn’t punch him. That’s the thing when you really look at it. That’s how it went down.”

YOU COULD CLINCH THE BUSCH TITLE THIS WEEKEND. WILL THIS TAKE AWAY FROM THAT? “The beginning of the week was pretty rough. Listen, I got on You Tube and I watched and I thought, ‘Wow, that wasn’t good,’ just like everybody else. Really, by the middle of the week, I’d come to terms with what happened and I’m just excited to get on with racing this weekend, race at Memphis and hopefully clinch the Busch title. Atlanta is one of my favorite tracks. I’m glad to be here this weekend. No, the way this deal is and the way the media is, hopefully this will be old news here after a week or two.”

HOW MUCH DID IT HELP TO HAVE MARK MARTIN ON THE TEAM TO BE THE LEADER. IT SEEMS LIKE SINCE HE HAS LEFT THAT NOBODY HAS STEPPED UP TO FILL THAT VOID? “I don’t agree with that exactly. I can say though that Mark Martin is a heck of a guy. I really like Mark a lot. We actually talked this week and he helped me a lot to understand kind of what might be going on and how to help make it better.”

KEVIN HARVICK SAID IN A TELECONFERENCE AND HE USED THE TERM ROID RAGE TO DESCRIBE YOUR BEHAVIOR. DO YOU HAVE ANY REACTION TO THAT AT ALL? “No, not really. I actually talked to Kevin yesterday and I think he knows that what he said was probably not the smartest thing to say.”

IF YOU COULD DO IT OVER AGAIN, HOW WOULD YOU APPROACH IT? “If I had it to do over again, we’d just talk about it, we’d sit down. I’d ask Jack to make us all sit down and work this stuff out in definitely a more civil manner. My sponsors and my fans, I regret that I did that in the manner that I did.”

ARE YOU SURPRISED JACK HASN’T MADE YOU SIT DOWN TOGETHER? “No, I’m not surprised. It’s really between Matt and I. Everybody has had a disagreement with somebody. Everybody has done something they wish they hadn’t done, and it takes a little bit of time to heal that kind of stuff.”

HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THE COT TEST HERE NEXT WEEK? “The car of tomorrow test, I’m really excited about it. It will be the first time we’ve really run these current cars at a mile-and-a-half track. I think it’s gonna be good.”

ARE YOU CONCERNED ABOUT THE SPEED? “It’ll be interesting to see how they work beside one another and see how the air changes how they handle. I think that it’s gonna be a bigger deal than it is with the car of today.”

HOW MUCH WILL WE BE ABLE TO TELL ABOUT THE CAR AND WILL IT BE INDICATIVE OF WHAT WE’LL SEE NEXT YEAR? “Oh yeah, this test is gonna say a lot about what’s gonna happen next year. It’s gonna show us a lot. I don’t know if you can tell who is gonna be great because there’s so much time between now and when we race it on a mile-and-a-half track, but it will tell us a lot.”

ARE YOU INSULTED WHEN THE WORD STEROIDS ARE ASSOCIATED WITH YOU? “No, I’m not insulted. That’s really a non-issue. I work out really hard. I do everything I can to be as healthy as I can and I think that’s pretty silly.”

FINAL COMMENT. “I just want to say one more time that I definitely regret what happened and hopefully everybody understands that it’s just competition. I do the best I can and, like I said, when things don’t go well, I might not be as happy as I am when things do go well. That’s just me. That’s how competitive I am.”

Matt Kenseth, driver of the No. 17 DeWalt Ford Fusion, held his weekly press conference on Friday in the Atlanta Motor Speedway infield media center to discuss a number of issues, including last weekend’s incident with Carl Edwards.

MATT KENSETH – No. 17 DeWalt Ford Fusion – WHAT IS YOUR OUTLOOK FOR THE CHASE? “Yeah, we’re making a charge here. I’m pretty sure we’re gonna win the championship (laughter). We’re closing in right on it and a couple more good weeks like we had in Martinsville and we’re gonna be right there. But no, seriously, I was happy to get a good finish at Martinsville. That’s been our best finish in the chase and I think that’s our second-best finish we ever had there, so we did gain some point. Even though we’re still 12th – although we all complain about going to New York and all the stuff that people like Herb make us do, it’s still a lot of fun to go up there. We have a lot of pride in trying to be in the top 10 and getting up there on stage and representing your team and sponsors and everything. I think we’re only 100 points out of seventh or something like that and, hopefully, we can keep gaining on it and climb our way back up there a little bit.”

CAN YOU UPDATE US ON THE SITUATION WITH CARL? HAS JACK MET WITH YOU GUYS? WHAT’S THE SITUATION WITHIN THE ROUSH FENWAY TEAM? “I think everything on the team is great. Honestly, I know there were some comments about team spirit and that kind of stuff, but I think that right now, honestly, just besides the two of us for whatever reason, I think team morale is maybe not at an all-time high, but it’s pretty darn high. Right now, all the crew chiefs are getting along better than they were a year ago. They’re sharing information better. They are understanding each other and the crew chiefs are understanding their drivers better and the engineers and all that stuff, so I think from the team standpoint it’s great. This thing is not about just the driver and Carl’s probably one of the first ones that can attest to that. In 2005, he made it look easy and made the chase and was a championship contender. Last year, they really struggled. He might have won one race or something or he might not have, I don’t know, and didn’t make the chase and kind of struggled through it, so it’s really about the team and I think right now all of the teams are working great together and are fired up and working hard at it. As far as just Carl and I, we haven’t talked since last week. Really, I don’t see at this point a big reason to or anything that’s gonna get solved, so we’ll carry on like always and be professionals and keep working together and try to get everybody at Roush Fenway running good.”

IS IT POSSIBLE THIS FLAP COULD BE FOR THE GOOD AND COMMUNICATION MIGHT OPEN UP? “I don’t know. Whenever you have a conflict, it’s never always just one person’s fault, so whenever you’re a part of that, you always feel bad about it, but, really, some of the things that were said about our communication and not talking the last six months or whatever, none of that is really true at all. We’ve worked fine together. I can think of several instances where he’s come to talk to me or I’ve talked to him about things or whatever. I think from him, for whatever reason, I think it’s maybe blown a little out of proportion. I honestly didn’t realize we had a big problem, and I just saw what you guys saw. There was no provoking, nothing going on. I saw exactly what you guys saw on that clip that everybody has been watching on You Tube. I watched it too and that’s all I know. I don’t really know what honestly provoked all that, so, hopefully, in the end, it’ll be a positive. I think that he’s probably got more stuff to work through than maybe I do. I don’t feel like I’ve been really a big cause of his problems. I know everything should work out good in the long run. I haven’t seen any changes in our team. I think our teams still get along good, and I think it’ll all be fine.”

MARK MARTIN WAS THE LEADER FOR MANY YEARS. HAS HIS PRESENCE BEEN MISSED AND IS THE ORGANIZATION LOOKING FOR SOMEONE TO BE THAT LEADER BY EXAMPLE? “I don’t think it’s that much different with Mark gone to be honest with you. Now Mark did go around the motorhome park lot at night and he’d come and see all us drivers and we’d all talk, and he probably does a better job with that than certainly I do or Greg or whoever else would be the leader of the team, if you want to call it that. But as far as the weekly stuff, Mark living in Florida and stuff, he didn’t really come around the shop that much. That’s kind of something a lot of people thought he did, but he really didn’t and, really, when the driver leadership guy involved in everything changed is really when Jeff Burton left the organization. He was really the guy at every single meeting and would come up with ideas and would go crazy when things weren’t going right and trying to fix things, and praising people when they were going right and all of that kind of stuff. So, Jeff was really kind of that guy. I don’t think I’m that guy. I don’t think I’m really cut out to be that guy, but I’m not sure that you need it either. We’re all racing for our own teams. We’re all helping each other. We should all be able to act like professionals. I don’t think you need one driver within the team to stand up in front of everybody and tell them how things are gonna be or whatever. We’re all equals and all of our input should matter and we should all figure out how to work together.”

CAN YOU COMMENT ON THE PROGRESS OF DAVID RAGAN? “Certainly David has been really interested and has had a lot of questions and he’s talked to all of us. He’s actually helped us with some stuff and we’ve tried to help him with as much stuff as we can. I think, honestly, the biggest thing David has going for him right now, in my opinion, is he’s starting to put up some good numbers. He was fast enough to win Richmond at the end of the race and all of that stuff is great, but the biggest thing is you haven’t heard much about him in the last few months and I think that’s good. I think he’s gained a lot of respect from all of his peers and other drivers on the race track, and all of the team members. He’s going out and doing his job and he’s not doing things that are gonna make headlines besides winning. He’s not doing the bad stuff or wrecking people on the track and losing respect, so I think he’s gained a lot of respect from all the people he’s racing against. Certainly you can see the progression because he’s running better and better every week.”

WHEN DO YOU THINK THE CONFLICT WITH CARL BEGAN? COULD THERE HAVE BEEN AT SOME POINT A TIME WHEN YOU COULD HAVE TALKED ABOUT IT AND PREVENTED LAST WEEK FROM HAPPENING? “The last part of that question is something only he can answer because I don’t know. I was just kind of standing there minding my own business when he came up, so I don’t know what would change his mind from doing that at the end of the race. I don’t know. I guess over the last year we’ve maybe been a little less friends maybe than we were before. There was a couple of things that have happened – maybe in the organization some things he said or whatever that maybe turned me off, and I did talk to him about them – that I didn’t think that was necessarily right. It was more just an individual/team type of thing, but I thought we kind of got all over that. I told him what I thought about it and we’ve talked about that a little bit, but our personalities are just a lot different. I didn’t think there really has been anything festering really that much. I don’t think I did anything different to him on Sunday that if he would have done the same thing to Tony Stewart, I’m sure the outcome would have been the same or worse. So I don’t think I did anything to him that was really necessarily that wrong, so I don’t know. There must be something that’s maybe been festering with him and he’s ready to blow about, but I don’t really know exactly what that would be. We haven’t really had any big conflicts. Before that Kansas thing, we went out on the track and did all that, before that we never really ran into each other on the track or never really had a fight about anything or a disagreement about anything, so I don’t really know.”

THERE HAVE BEEN REFERENCES TO ANOTHER TYPE OF CARL THAT WE DON’T SEE. CAN YOU EXPLAIN THAT? “I don’t hang out with him that much to really know that, but I guess I was a little surprised to see what I saw there. But yet that’s a side I see of him every once in a while or that maybe some people see that other people don’t, so I guess that’s probably all everybody meant. I mean, that’s kind of opposite as he looks in interviews. I think that’s probably what they meant.”

IS THERE ERRATIC BEHAVIOR YOU’VE SEEN? HAVE YOU CALLED HIM BACK AND IS IT IMPORTANT YOU ALL GET ALONG ON A TEAM? “We need to all get along and be professional. I don’t know, you can make your own judgment on what you guys saw. You guys saw the same thing I did. They caught the whole thing on film thanks to Bob Dilner. Everybody saw the same thing I did, so I thought it was slightly different than he was just before that. I guess that’s probably why I made that comment, and it was different again when he called me and left me a message Monday. So, no, I didn’t call him back. It’s one of them things that I don’t know how to fix that. He can tell me whatever he wants, but that’s what happened. Actions speak a lot louder than words and until you see the actions are telling you different, that’s probably when you’ll feel better about it.”

DO YOU HAVE TO GET ALONG AS TEAMMATES? “I don’t want to call people out and bring names up, but there have been a lot of teammates that didn’t necessarily get along that have been very, very productive, including some people that have been at our stable and been very, very productive. So I don’t think that really has anything to do with it. I think the key word there is probably respect. I think you’ve got to respect your teammates and respect all your peers out there, and if you do the right thing, most times people are gonna do the right thing back to you, so I think that’s the main thing.”

WAS SUNDAY’S INCIDENT WHAT YOU WERE REFERRING TO IN TERMS OF HIS ERRATIC BEHAVIOR OR ARE THERE OTHER EXAMPLES YOU CAN MENTION? “I don’t know. I don’t want to make too much of that. I guess I was kind of saying that because he got out and did his interviews and went and talked to my team engineer and went and talked to Jeff Burton and went and talked to a bunch of people and he was happy, and then he came over and acted like that without being provoked and I thought that was a little strange. That’s all I meant about it. It didn’t really mean to go much deeper than that.”

HOW MUCH DO YOU THINK YOU DESERVE JUST AN APOLOGY? HOW MUCH WOULD THAT HELP? “It helps if you get an apology, but, like I said, I think the main thing is that actions speak louder than words. Anybody can call and say the words. I’ve heard them actually a lot of times from there. You can go run into people and then walk up next week and say, ‘Hey man, I’m really sorry.’ And then you can run into them again next week and say, ‘Hey man, I’m really sorry.’ And you can do that again. Well, pretty soon when you walk up and say you’re sorry, you say, ‘OK, he doesn’t mean that.’ I’m not saying just necessarily him, I just mean that your actions kind of speak more than your words. You know what I mean? So if you act like you’re sorry and things change and your relationship gets better, then you kind of believe it. But anybody can just walk up and say, ‘Hey, sorry.’ It’s whether they really mean it or not.”

FROM AN EGO PERSPECTIVE, WHAT WERE YOUR FEELINGS WHEN YOU WATCHED THAT? “First of all, I’m not the biggest guy in the world and I was glad I didn’t get my butt kicked. So that was the first thing. After watching it I was glad he pulled back (laughter). But it’s disappointing. It’s disappointing for your sponsors – for his sponsors it’s disappointing. I imagine by the time Monday or Tuesday rolled around it was probably embarrassing to him too. I know he’s tougher than me. In my opinion everybody is different. There are macho people and there aren’t, but I don’t think fighting is ever a way to solve a problem anyway. I try to stay out of that and not just because I’m little, but that’s just not really my thing. I’d rather talk things through with somebody and try to fix your problem somewhere in private and go from there. The whole thing was disappointing. Obviously it was kind of ugly, but it gave you guys something to talk about all week, so that part was good. Everybody was sick of talking about Jimmie and Jeff driving away, leading the points thing, so this kind of spiced everything up a little.”

Jack Roush, car owner of five Ford Racing Fusions, addressed the incident between Carl Edwards and Matt Kenseth in the garage area at Atlanta Motor Speedway on Friday before practice.

JACK ROUSH, Car Owner – Roush Fenway Ford Fusions – WHAT STEPS HAVE YOU TAKEN THIS WEEK AS FAR AS DEALING WITH THE INCIDENT BETWEEN CARL AND MATT? “I’ve been engaged all week trying to understand what the reasons were and what the frustration was behind the conflict between Carl and Matt, and I think we have the measure of it. Certainly, Carl realizes that he wasn’t a friend to Matt and Matt, I think, is anxious to have Carl get some relief from the dilemma he finds himself in. We’re working our way through the aftermath of the conflict that was regrettable, and I think in the future, in a scenario where there will be conflict and differences of opinion, that we’ll be able to avoid that confrontation.”

THERE HAS BEEN A LOT OF TALK THIS WEEK ABOUT HOW RICK HENDRICK COMES ON THE RADIO TO TALK TO HIS DRIVERS AND MAYBE CALM THEM DOWN. WILL YOU BECOME MORE ACTIVE IN THAT REGARD WHEN YOUR GUYS ARE ON TRACK? “Very seldom do I feel the need to become engaged with the running of the race from a crew chief and a driver point of view. In a very, very rare circumstance I’ll clarify something that’s obvious to me for all to hear, but not very often. I think by maintaining a pretty much hands-off policy toward the development of the race is what NASCAR looks for. I think it’s in the interest of fair play as seen by the fans, and I don’t see a greater participation myself to try to stave off a conflict or a dispute that could potentially occur. This is an overtly aggressive, competitive, potentially combative circumstance that occurs between all the drivers on the race track. I want that from my drivers and their sponsors so everybody recognizes that the ability of the car and the judgment of the crew chief will manifest itself for all of our activities, for all of our different programs in the result on the race track. There may be a dispute over space from time to time among drivers, but in the case between Matt and Carl it wasn’t just what happened at that race at Martinsville, it was the fact that there had been some conflicts and some hard feelings that had smoldered for some period of time. By having discussion and thinking about the things that are in the common best interest for their careers, I’m sure that reason will prevail going forward.”