Another top Sprint Cup driver quits propping up the Nationwide series

Carl Edwards

While a regular contender for NASCAR's Sprint Cup, Carl Edwards has also been a leading race winner in the second-tier NASCAR Nationwide Series with Roush Fenway Racing for the past seven years. That won't be the case in 2012, as Edwards, along with Kyle Busch before him, has decided not to run any Nationwide races – although he left open the possibility of changing that plan later in the season.

"The way we're approaching this season is, I'm not committing to any races right now," Edwards told NASCAR.com. "And as the season goes, if I decide I'm just a nervous ball of energy on Saturdays and I can't function without going and racing – because that might be the case – then we'll work to try to go Nationwide racing."

Edwards' attempts to win two NASCAR championships in the same season came to an end last year, when NASCAR issued a rule limiting drivers to racing for only one national series championship in any season.

"Once they said we could not run for the championship, I had already committed and Roush and the sponsors had already committed to running the full season," Edwards said. "So we stuck with it and we did it. But to me, that was really, in my mind, my last real go at it for the whole season."