NASCAR’s gigantic media deal is finally paying off. Carl Edwards, the long-lost hero of the sport who executed perfect back-flips after every race victory, is back. The 28-time Cup Series race winner disappeared into oblivion after the 2016 season. Now Amazon Prime, one of NASCAR’s new partners in the $7.7 Billion media rights deal, has finally roped him back.
What is more, Carl Edwards will join Dale Earnhardt Jr. and a slew of big names as well! Amazon Prime will begin its duties on May 25, in a five-race Cup Series broadcast schedule. Now that it has announced a star-studded line-up, we cannot wait for May to come sooner!
Carl Edwards and others spice up the 2025 schedule
Back in February 2024, Dale Earnhardt Jr. sent off ripples of nostalgia. He announced his exit from the NBC Sports broadcast booth, which he joined in 2018 after retiring from full-time racing. However, Dale Jr. also left his fans hanging in suspense – after taking a season off in 2024, he intended to resume his broadcasting duties in 2025. Dale Jr. will now be in the Amazon Prime broadcast booth. Joining him would be Adam Alexander as the play-by-play announcer and Steve Letarte, the 2011 Daytona 500 winning crew chief. This already star-studded crowd just leveled up with the addition of 2024 NASCAR Hall of Fame inductee Carl Edwards.
Amazon Prime recently posted its fresh line-up of race analysts on Instagram. Guess whose picture adorned the first slide? Yes, you thought right – Cousin Carl. Prime captioned the details on this post: “To round out our inaugural @NASCAR season coverage team we’re proud to add Hall-of-Famer Carl Edwards and a dynamic trio of pit reporters: Trevor Bayne, Kim Coon, and Marty Snider.” Carl Edwards‘ accomplices are stars as well – Trevor Bayne is the 2011 Daytona 500 winner. Kim Coon previously worked as a pit reporter at NBC and the Motor Racing Network. Then Marty Snider has decades of experience reporting from the pits for NBC.
Clearly, fans will heavily look forward to tuning into Amazon Prime this season. The combination of Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Carl Edwards is something out of a NASCAR book of legends. What is more, both racer-turned-TV analysts are relying on each other to make this line-up a success. Edwards said so recently: “Dale’s involvement in this is key.”
Edwards also said, “I didn’t get anything out of my mouth and the first thing he said to me was, ‘Hey, I want this to be a good team. We are going to support each other; we will build each other up.’ Hearing this I thought, ‘Man, this is just perfect.’”
But it took time and effort to come to that perfect level. Amazon Prime went out of their way to gain Carl Edwards’ confidence.
Coaxing a hero back into action
Well, a big question mark hovered in people’s minds in 2016. That Cup Series season marked the peak of Carl Edwards’ career. During the Homestead-Miami championship finale, he crashed out of the lead with just four laps remaining. This marked the second time he came dangerously close to a Cup Series title after losing it to Tony Stewart in 2011.
Instead of storming back for redemption, Edwards bizarrely exited the sport within two months of that fateful race. Let alone pursuing other motorsports, Edwards chose a quiet life in Columbia, Missouri, and prioritized his roles as a farmer, husband, and father. No amount of coaxing by NASCAR to return would convince him – he rarely popped up only for an occasional charity event.
However, Amazon Prime was determined to pull him back to the sport. The initial conversation between the parties left things on a cliffhanger. Then two Prime Video executives wanted to meet Carl Edwards in person. But Edwards gave a condition: to join him in a Jiu-jitsu class and then go home for dinner. They obliged and won over Edwards: “I just threw this out there and I thought, ‘This is crazy.’ I said, ‘If you guys want to come meet, we’re going to jiu-jitsu and then my wife will cook us some lunch. What do you think?’ They were like, ‘This is great!’ They actually showed up, put on the G, we had a great class and (his wife) cooked us a great meal. And afterward, I was like, ‘These are my people.’”
Evidently, Amazon Prime was fiercely motivated to pull in Carl Edwards. At the end of it, the media partner was successful – and now we cannot wait to watch Cousin Carl back in NASCAR.
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