“It blew my mind”: Carl Edwards highlights differences between Jack Roush and Joe Gibbs

During his appearance on Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s podcastt, Carl Edwards described the differences between working for Joe Gibbs Racing from his days with Roush-Fenway Racing. The NASCAR Hall of Famer had significant tenures with the two big team owners in Jack Roush and Joe Gibbs.

For Roush Fenway Racing, Edwards drove the #99 Ford in the Cup Series and #60 in the Xfinity Series, achieving varying levels of success. The winner of the 2007 Busch Series with the team was involved in a tie breaker with Tony Stewart in 2011 for the Cup Series Championship, but lost. He left RFK in 2014 after spending 11 years with the team.

In 2015, Joe Gibbs Racing acquired his services to drive the #19 Toyota. In his two seasons with JGR, Edwards won five races, including two in his debut season. He narrowly missed out on the championship in 2016 after crashing out in the championship 4. At the end of the season, Edwards retired unexpectedly.

On the Dale Jr. Download podcast, Carl Edwards described the difference of ownership between Jack Roush and Joe Gibbs.

He found that Jack Roush was more involved in the day-to-day operations. Roush had the “technical” knowledge of the cars, whereas Joe Gibbs didn’t understand that, but was always there to elevate the teams.

"He's [Roush] going to master every single piece, and he had his hand in every single thing, and if you've never seen Jack in a meeting screaming about lug nuts and stuff, I mean it's awesome this guy knows what's up. Then you moved to Joe Gibbs Racing and it blew my mind. Completely different, I remember coach came to one of our first meetings and we're going around the table he would come and sit everybody sits around drivers...," Carl Edwards said (50:01 onwards).

The 45-year-old recalled an encounter where he showcased Joe Gibbs' lack of technical knowledge, but also the willingness for the team owner to make the necessary changes for the drivers to win.

"...and he goes around and says like basically you know you why didn't you win, you why didn't you win why you and and then he'd just say, 'Okay cool you didn't win because of this'. I remember one time he said something like, 'I don't know anything about tires, I don't get it, I don't know I don't need to know, you tell me what I need to do so that you can make these tires work the way you need them work', and so he gave up all the control and put it in the hands of others."

"And then let them kind of run the ship and he just facilitated it, where Jack could really run everything himself and he was like the central computer, the actual mechanical brain behind everything."

Carl Edwards was inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame in 2025.

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Carl Edwards in awe of Jack Roush's technical knowledge

Carl Edwards, during the same interview, described Jack Roush's technical knowledge. He said that Roush could do anything in the garage, from building a car to building airplanes.

"Jack Roush, like I said, clawed through, not just a sport but the actual technical aspects of it, so anybody who's been around Jack knows that he can build the shop, he can build the car, he can drive the car, he can build the airplanes, he can fly the airplanes he can tune the carburetor. He can build the pistons. I mean he can take a cam shaft out of a piece of metal, he can do anything, and that's how he's built," Carl Edwards said.

Known as "The Cat in the Hat" for his signature Panama hat, Roush is the founder, CEO, and co-owner of Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing