Rolex 24 breakthrough a long time coming for Edwards

The biggest win of John Edwards’ career was balanced by a mundane appointment that can’t help but keep a driver’s ego in check.

Less than 48 hours after taking victory for BMW Team RLL at the Rolex 24 At Daytona (pictured middle, above), the former open-wheel champion was sitting motionless in a chair, gripping the armrests, and staring at the ceiling while his dentist went to work with picks and tools inside his mouth.

Edwards would have been excused if he canceled the visit and went on a week-long bender followed his success in Daytona. Considering how the Kentuckian’s decade-plus in professional sports car racing has rarely been kind or generous in the results column, his role as the veteran in the No. 24 BMW M8 GTE he shares with Jesse Krohn, Chaz Mostert, and Augusto Farfus, was significant as the menacing black sedan rolled into victory lane.

Despite his youthful age, the 28-year-old has amassed more than a decade in sports car competition following his 2009 Atlantic Championship title. Speed and race craft have never been in question with Edwards, but if there have been random mechanical failures or bad luck to find someone in the teams he’s driven for, it’s typically made a beeline for the BMW factory driver’s entry.

In capturing North America’s most prestigious endurance win, hopefully the racing gods will keep picking a different target and give Edwards the reprieve he’s deserved for many years.

“You're not the first person to express that,” Edwards said while driving away from the dentist. “And even a couple of the drivers I've worked with, been teammates with before -- even the guys in the sister car, Bruno Spengler and Phillipp Eng -- had some similar words to say. But I realized, everybody's saying that mostly because of all the terrible luck I've had, so I'm not sure if that really says a lot about me or just more about what I've been through...”

As a precocious youngster in 2004, Edwards appeared set for a long career in open-wheel. But history had other plans for him. Image by LAT

Had Edwards’ career continued on its open-wheel path, there’s no doubt he’d be driving for a top IndyCar team today. Lost in the merger between Champ Car and the former Indy Racing League, Edwards’ talent was undeniable, but with no invitations to the big series, he went where the offers were made, and has remained in sports cars as a vital cog in BMW’s factory GT Le Mans program.

As part of the BMW Team RLL effort since 2013, Edwards has built a stellar reputation within the squad, and despite the aforementioned bad luck, his contributions to the team have been consistent. Talent and stature aside, worries did begin to set in as the final hours of a ragged fight with the No. 912 Porsche 911 RSR let to the inevitable concerns that something would go awry before the checkered flag.

The intensity of the GTLM battle never gave Edwards or his BMW Team RLL teammates a moment's rest until the checkered flag. Or even then... Image by Jake Galstad / LAT Images)

“My dad was watching in the morning, and my mom said at some point when I started my third stint, he got so stressed he had to walk away and stop watching for a few minutes,” he said. “He went and laid down on the bed, and of course he wasn't able to sleep but he just had to take a break. He was too stressed out about it. And unfortunately, my wife was not able to come to Daytona this year, although she normally does, and she got a lot less sleep than I did, because I slept four or five hours in the middle of the night and apparently she was waking up every half hour in a panic just wondering if we were still in it.

“So, I think our history has added up to cause everybody a lot of stress, and my teammate Chaz said it best that, ‘Jesse crossed the [finish] line, we're all cheering,’ but he said he still looked back as Jesse was going into Turn 1, wondering if something else was going to go wrong… And I mean he had crossed the line, he had the checker, but he's like, ‘Something's going to go wrong. I can feel it. It's too good to be true.’ So, it was a big moment of relief and definitely a big monkey off our backs.”

For those who tuned into the NBC broadcast or were fortunate enough to witness it live, the 24-hour long GTLM match will go down as one of the finest the Rolex 24 has produced. The sheer intensity of the chases between BMW and Porsche, primarily, with the M8 GTEs sporting a power advantage while the 911 RSRs demonstrated a surplus in handling, meant both camps were locked in nose-to-tail battles throughout the race.

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Unable to relax, the BMW vs Porsche scrap left drivers like Edwards on high alert from start to finish, and fortunately, the lone Ferrari 488 GTE from Risi Competizione was able to offer a brief comedy break overnight.

“Every time I looked in my mirror, I had a car there chasing me,” he said. “And typically, it was not just one car. I did a triple stint in the middle of the night and took the lead, had the lead when I got in, but the Porsche was there pressuring. I was able to get a little bit of a gap, but never more than two seconds, and ran that stint ahead of them. And then, suddenly, the Ferrari was there chasing me and hounding me. Actually, a funny sidebar about that:

“The Ferrari, in that second stint in the middle of the night started flashing his lights at me because he was trying to distract me and trying to stick his nose in, in the infield. I didn't have anyone in front of me that came out of the Bus Stop one lap, he flashed his lights again, and so I thought, ‘What's the point of that? He's flashing his lights, but I'm not just going to move out of his way.’

“So, I flashed my lights. And even though he was behind me, being nighttime, it's bright enough that my lights go out and flash back on, so he could tell I was doing it in response to him…so he flashed his lights again. We were flashing our lights at each other all the way from the Bus Stop into Turn 1, and I have to say, crossing start/finish [line was] the hardest I've ever laughed in a race car. In a way, his distraction kind of worked because I was laughing pretty hard at that and really had to refocus to gather myself back up and get back to it.

“We were able to entertain ourselves when it was 1:00 o'clock in the morning in a 24-hour race. But that was the nature of it. We were fighting the whole time. The reason that I love this category is that, despite leading a lot of the races, the cars -- aside from anybody who didn't have a mechanical problem -- from first to fifth or sixth could have won the race. There was a period where the Corvette got past the Porsche. There was a period that the Corvette was faster than us, and so, really, even though those guys finished off the podium, everyone was a threat. And that's the beauty of GTLM. It's never, ever, ever over until it's over, until the checkered flag waves.”

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Adding to Edwards’ sense of appreciation for winning IMSA’s biggest race was the relief in seeing friend and fellow American star Bryan Sellers preparing to celebrate his victory, coming in the GT Daytona class with Paul Miller Racing, and being given a new Rolex watch, like all of the Rolex 24 winners receive.

“On the podium, I saw Bryan Sellers, who's obviously a great guy, super down to earth and super quick, and has been around for a long time. I said, ‘What number is this for you? It's got to be three or four?’ he remarked. “And he said, ‘No, man, this is number one. My first watch!’ I was like, ‘Man, how is that possible?’ He's like, ‘Stuff always goes wrong.’ I said, ‘Well, I know the feeling. I feel like it's been forever and it was never going to happen for me, but you've been around even longer than I have.’ So, I was stoked to see him get one, because I know the feeling of suffering through those losses and times that you think could have been when something goes wrong.”

This year's winners with their coveted Rolexes: GTD's Madison Snow, Bryan Sellers, Corey Lewis, Andrea Caldarelli; DPi's Renger van der Zande, Ryan Briscoe, Scott Dixon, Kamui Kobayashi; GTLM's John Edwards, Augusto Farfus, Chaz Mostert, Jesse Krohn; LMP2's Ben Hanley, Henrik Hedman, Colin Braun, Harrison Newey. Image by Michael L. Levitt/LAT

Well before the dentist appointment, Edwards and the victorious BMW Team RLL outfit were treated to a celebration by the brand’s leadership Sunday night in Daytona. The private celebration Monday night, however, needed to be cleared by BMW’s upper brass.

“Well, first of all, Jens Marquardt and Victor Leleu, our bosses at BMW, organized a very nice dinner for us at Hyde Park Steak House after the race and treated us to some of the best steak and some of the best wine I've ever had,” he said. “My first night back at home Monday night, my wife came home, and I said, ‘We should open a really nice bottle of wine tonight.’ And she said, ‘Well, what do you want to eat with it?’ And we looked at each other, and at the same time we both said we wanted pizza. So, we shared one of the nicest bottles of wine that we own with our pizza.

“I can't say that's the classiest thing I've ever done, but I texted my boss [Leleu], who's French and a big wine guy, I said, ‘Hey, is this allowed?’ And he said, ‘Just this once I'll allow it.’ So, he enjoyed that last night. But yeah, unfortunately, had to come back to earth and get some errands done and go to the dentist, which is one of my least favorite things. But I did wear my brand-new watch to the dentist, and so I have to say I enjoyed my time there a lot more than I've ever have in the past.”

With the long overdue appearance of a race-won Rolex timepiece on his wrist, Edwards has wasted no time in letting his driver friends know about it.

“My buddy Matt Bell yesterday, he said, ‘I love how unapologetically douchey you are about checking the time right now,’ because I was wearing a fleece,” he said. “I made sure to roll up my sleeve to see what time it was.”