Former NASCAR Driver Carl Edwards to Be Inducted Into Texas Motor Speedway Hall of Fame
Joe Gibbs, Kevin Harvick, and Christopher Bell also will be honored during a ceremony on Nov. 3.
Former NASCAR driver Carl Edwards will be inducted into the Texas Motor Speedway Hall of Fame on Nov. 3. The induction ceremony will be a part of the Texas Motor Speedway NASCAR race weekend that will culminate in the running of the AAA Texas 500 Cup Series contest.
Edwards won six NASCAR national-level races at TMS, four times in the Cup Series and twice in the Xfinity Series. His final-career Cup Series win came there in November 2016, his final year as a NASCAR driver. All his wins at Texas came with Roush Fenway Racing, except for the final Cup win. Edwards made the move from Roush Fenway to Joe Gibbs Racing in 2015. He abruptly retired from NASCAR ahead of the 2017 season.
Carl Edwards steps away.
, Carl Edwards announces his retirement from NASCAR during a press conference at Joe Gibbs Racing in January 2017, Getty Images for NASCARAlso during the ceremony, Joe Gibbs will be recognized with the Bruton Smith Legend Award. As a car owner, Gibbs won seven times at Texas Motor Speedway in Cup Series competition with four different drivers—Tony Stewart, Denny Hamlin, Kyle Busch, and Edwards. He has 11 wins at the track in the Xfinity Series, including five-straight between 2008 and 2010 with Kyle Busch behind the wheel. Busch has contributed eight victories to the JGR Xfinity Series wins tally at TMS, while Erik Jones has won the other three.
Gibbs also is slated to be inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame in January 2019.
Christopher Bell, who is in his first year as a full-time Xfinity Series driver for Joe Gibbs Racing in 2018, will be honored with the Sportsmanship Award. He won a NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race at TMS last year, en route to the series championship, as a driver for Kyle Busch Motorsports. After the race, though, Bell showed concern for drivers involved in a serious last-lap crash. All drivers involved, including Johnny Sauter, Austin Wayne Self, and Timothy Peters, were uninjured.
"First off, I want to make sure everyone is okay. It's kind of a sorrow victory,” Bell said in victory lane after the win.
Kevin Harvick wins at Texas.
, Kevin Harvick celebrates winning the AAA Texas 500 at Texas Motor Speedway on Nov. 5, 2017., Getty Images for NASCARKevin Harvick, the defending winner of the AAA Texas 500, will be honored with the 2017 Racer of the Year Award. He has been a winner at Texas in all three of NASCAR’s national series. In all, he has won six times as a driver at Forth Worth track, four of those coming in the Xfinity Series. He also is a winning car owner at Texas Motor Speedway in both Xfinity and Camping World Truck Series competition. His win at TMS last November, though, was his first Cup Series win there as a driver.
"This feels so good,” Harvick said after last year’s race. “We have been qualifying well here and racing well ever since I have been at Stewart-Haas Racing and just never got it to work out to go to victory lane."
The 2018 TMS Hall of Fame induction ceremony is scheduled for 11 a.m. CT in the Grand Ballroom of the facility’s Speedway Club. The event is a fundraiser for the Texas chapter of Speedway Children’s Charities.
