Some photos from before and after today's race:

JJ Yeley (left) explains to Kiefer Sutherland why he should be the next NASCAR driver to make an appearance on "24" as opposed to having Carl Edwards come back.


Cindy McCain, wife of Republican presidential nominee John McCain, greets Kyle Busch before the race.  I'm voting for her husband anyway.


Carl Edwards jumps for joy that the 2008 Sunoco Red Cross Pennsylvania 500 at Pocono Raceway is finally over.  And that he won.


"You win this round, Flipper!  But I'm the one going for the championship three-peat!"

(Photo Credit for first and fourth photos: Drew Hallowell/Getty Images for NASCAR.  Photo Credit for second photo: Jim McIsaac/Getty Images.  Photo Credit for third photo: Rusty Jarrett/Getty Images for NASCAR.  Blame me for the captions.)

Pocono Raceway Post-Race Transcript

An interview with:
 
CARL EDWARDS
BOB OSBORNE
JACK ROUSH

KERRY THARP:  Outstanding job out there today, gentlemen.  This is Carl's fourth victory in 2008, his second victory here at Pocono Raceway.  He moves up to third in the points in the Chase for the Sprint Cup, closing in on second.
 
Carl, terrific performance out there this afternoon.  You had to feel good about that.
 
CARL EDWARDS:  Oh, yeah.  There's nothing like winning.  I remember sitting here in 2005 and just, you know, this track, it's real gratifying to win here.  You know, a lot of really great drivers have done very well here.  It just means a lot to be on the list of people that have won here.
 
Bob did a great job.  Wasn't so sure about halfway through when we were yelling at each other.  But, you know, Bob did an unbelievable job.  Jack, you know, the engine was awesome. 
The pit crew was awesome.  Luck went our way today.

That's as good as it gets right there.

KERRY THARP:  Bob, I know this track is kind of in your backyard, Penn State grad.  Your thoughts about how the race unfolded?

BOB OSBORNE:  It was a little stressful at moments.  You know, the rain comes.  We're not sure what we wanted to do.  You know, we talked about what we would do if the rain cleared up and they got the track dry.  That's what we ended up doing.  Then it started raining harder.  Carl's on the pit box with me, and we're arguing at that point why we did what we did.

It was a stressful day, but it worked out for us.  We both had a good time doing it.  That's why we're here:  to win and have a good time.

KERRY THARP:  Jack, another big win for Roush Fenway Racing here today.  Now as we have five races left in the Race for the Chase, Carl Edwards is coming on strong.  Got to be a guy to contend for that championship.  Your thoughts?

JACK ROUSH:  Well, Carl has been strong all year.  We reunited Bob and Carl together again this year.  They've enjoyed one another's company  at least most of the time.  I wasn't aware of the shouting match.

The crew chief has the power in our world to make the final decision.  He's the captain of the ship.  The driver knows more about what's going on right in front of him as it relates to who's going on pit road and who didn't.  Bob made a courageous call, probably the thing I would have done if I made the call, and most of our crew chiefs would have done, which is to protect what they had.  He had a fast car, he was out front.  Why would you give that up and go back in the field and jeopardize or take a chance on getting collected with somebody that you didn't need to be racing with if the rain had come and stopped.

But Bob made a decision.  He said he thought he wasn't going to win it the way he was.  He thought he needed to go to the back.  There were a number of people that went with him.  But he was the first one.  He was the head of that line.  It proved to be that right decision.  You have to have a little bit of good luck going for you to win this.  But unless he'd had the courage to do the thing he thought he was right, he wouldn't have won today.  And I congratulate him for that.  He did the right thing.

The next time it may not work out as well, but he still needs to make that decision.  Whatever he feels is right is what we need to do.  That's his job.

KERRY THARP:  We'll take questions.

Q.  We're all kind of confused before you walked in.  Give us the straight scoop what happened.  You knew you had a car that could get back to the front.
 
BOB OSBORNE:  We discussed it on the radio.  I was planning on pitting.  Carl said, What would you do if you thought the track would get cleaned up and we'd run it green?  I told him we would come for two tires.  When the time came, he came for two tires.  I didn't tell him to stay out.

CARL EDWARDS:  My deal was, I felt like, you know, he left it to me a little bit.  What got to me, Jimmie, they'd committed to coming.  I was like, Well, we'll go ahead and come.
 
But, yeah, I mean, if I would have said stay out, that's what we would have done.  But I think we were both about 51% on the 'come in' side and neither one of us were going to argue.

But the argument came from when it started raining real hard, then we were trying to blame one another for the idea of coming.  He said it was my idea.  I really felt like it was his idea.  That's where the argument came.

I had to leave the pit box because I was worried Bob was going to like punch me in the neck or something.  You were looking kind of angry (laughter).

Q.  How heated did it get?  It was kind of clear on television you needed to get away from him.

CARL EDWARDS:  Did they show that on TV?

Yeah, I had to walk away.  But personally, I feel like we have a really good relationship.  We could be brutally honest with one another, and that's really valuable.  There's no beating around the bush.  If Bob feels a certain way about something, he tells me, and I tell him.  To me that's really valuable.

Q.  When those decisions don't go well, it can be poisonous to a team.  Are you glad it worked out this way because it might have been something that lasted a week or two?

BOB OSBORNE:  No.  Well, I think it could be for certain teams.  But not ours.  You know, Carl and I, I don't know what the perception is, but we argue on a regular basis.  I mean, it's not out of the ordinary for us to argue.  We argue.  We get mad at each other.  We walk away.  Then we walk back together and calmer heads prevail.  We have a discussion.  Then we might argue again on the same subject, walk away, come back together.
 
But, you know, through the arguments and through the discussions and through the handshakes and the hugs, we come to terms with what we want to do and when we want to do it.  99% of the time it works out for us.  Yes, sometimes it doesn't.  And when it doesn't, we say, Okay, we argued through it, we came to terms, we came to an agreement, and it didn't work out for either of us.  End of the day.

Q.  Jack, the 99 team obviously has been hot all year.  The 18, the 48, the 9 have been hot sometimes.  Can you assess your team's readiness for a championship run with NASCAR's playoff round coming up?  How strong do you feel heading into the Chase this year?
 
JACK ROUSH:  Well, I think it's important to win races.  That's the thing that will separate people as we start this year, the Chase.  It's important not to have component failures.  It's important to race with great enthusiasm.  It's important to have some luck going with you.  And it's important to have structure and wisdom within the organization.
 
I'll look at Carl when I say this.  He can slap me if he wants.  He wasn't ready to win a championship, I think, until this year.  I think this year he can go head to head with Jimmie Johnson, Tony Stewart, with anybody else that's there.  And I think he can close the deal.

But the championship ultimately winds up normally being determined by how well you do when things go bad, you know, when you have to say, My car's not right, we've had a little wreck, you know, something's happened.  Do you go on and self destruct or do you manage to be in a frame of mind where you can go on and get the most out of it?  Matt Kenseth and Robbie Reiser did a great job.  Matt's done a great job with Chip right now.  They and Carl and Bob are in the same league with the best of the best.  Unless you've got that level of maturity and wisdom and presence and experience that gives you that, within the organization, having a lot of speed in the car, being able to win a lot of races, is not going to do it.  When things go bad, you're going to disintegrate.  Carl is going to be ready to do that this year.  I'm real confident.

I have hopes still of getting David Ragan in, which will be real exciting if that can happen.  Of course, Matt and Greg will make a good accounting of themselves, too.  They're in championship form.  The organizations look great.

Q.  Carl, you said the other day second is as good as 20th.  Clearly you're not racing for points right now; you're racing for wins.  When you have this discussion with Bob on the box, is this the intensity?

CARL EDWARDS:  Yeah, you're exactly right.  That's the underlying root of the intensity of the arguments.  I mean, if we can win the race, that's great.  Anything other than winning, you know, back to about 25th right now isn't going to make a difference for the end of our season as far as the results.

For us, we have to win right now.  And we can't give up opportunities to win races.  That's what was so heartbreaking about last week, is to finish so close to winning.  You know, everybody pats you on the back and said, Great run.  But at this point in our season, that's not what we're out to do.  So we have a pretty high standard for ourselves, and sometimes that causes a little bit of frustration.  But that all changes once the Chase starts.  Then it's points racing, you know.

Q.  Jack, for the second consecutive weekend we've got just a crazy race.  Matt Kenseth at one point had picked up three spots in the standings, at the end fuel strategy kills him and he drops out unofficially of the Chase.  Can you talk about that.

JACK ROUSH:  Well, Lee Spencer asked me right in the middle of the race what I thought about what was going to happen.  I said, I've got winners and I've got losers.  I've got people who stayed and I've got people who came and we'll see how it works out.  There isn't a correct answer so far.  From where Matt was and where Chip was, the fact they didn't have    for whatever reason, their car didn't have the fuel mileage that the 99 car did.  For everything we could see it should have had, but it was down a couple of 10ths a mile a gallon.  And it wasn't close for them.  It wasn't as clear a shot for them they could make it.  It took more cautions than it did for the 99 to be able to do what they were able to do.  Chip made the decision not to do that.  If it had rained, he would have been a winner.

The 17 has got a lot of speed.  Matt and Chip are doing a nice job.  I just hope that the races in front of them, the way they unfold, won't wind up leaving them on the outside.

I give my thanks to everybody in the media for not calling me about the race we had at Indianapolis, which was just diabolical.  That was just a horrible race from a owner's point of view, team's point of view, to be able to get down there, run those short stints, have a quarter panel come flying off your car on the same lap that three other cars on the track at that time had flat tires, had worn their tires and were losing air.  That's just a disaster.  To go through something like that and to wind up, as Carl said, second without the opportunity to get the 10 points to carry into the Chase was a double frustration.  I don't know what I would have said if somebody called me last week, but I'm sure I would have been apologizing for it today.

Coming into Pocono, having it rain, is something we put up with the two times we come.  You can count on most of the time it's going to rain.  If it doesn't rain, fuel mileage is going to be important.  If it does rain, sometimes fuel mileage will be important.  This is a place where things unfold.  And a crew chief's got to look into his crystal ball and decide what's gonna happen.  Nobody knows for sure.  Sometimes they're right, and sometimes they're not.

There's just so much happenstance that works into this thing when you have a race that unfolded like it did at Indianapolis, it just breaks your heart if you've got as much at stake as we all do.

Q.  Speaking of Indy, how important was it today for your confidence knowing that you didn't have to deal with that kind of situation again, maybe the tire situation rebounded from last week?

CARL EDWARDS:  Yeah, I mean, the deal is that, you know, some weeks it might be the tires, and some weeks it might be the weather, fuel mileage.  Everyone's in the same boat.

To me last week was something that nobody wanted to have to deal with, but we did.  You know, this week we had a whole new different types of stresses.  That's just racing.  It's the same for everyone.

Q.  Carl, you sounded a little surprised when you mentioned saving fuel at the end a little bit.

CARL EDWARDS:  Did they play that?  Bob says, How much fuel did you save?  What do you mean (laughter)?  Or I wasn't listening.

Q.  Were you out of gas?

CARL EDWARDS:  I don't know.  How close were we?

BOB OSBORNE:  One lap cushion.  We were fine.  I was just asking him to be a little conservative in case we needed 'green white checkered' laps, something like that.  Just being overly cautious.

JACK ROUSH:  Bob and I were watching.  I was there interfering with Bob a little bit on the stand.  I was a little anxious that if he went out and got himself a seven, eight, nine second lead, and a caution came, you know, or a 'green white checkered' thing came, he might not have enough tire as well as enough gas to be able to do it.  I was concerned as much about saving some tires as I was saving some gas.  Some of that manifested itself in some anxiety I introduced that was probably unnecessary.

Q.  What's the most important thing you take about the win from here?  Is it the points, the confidence or momentum?
 
CARL EDWARDS:  Well, I don't believe in momentum so much.  But I'll tell you what, you know, the confidence could lead to some momentum.  Seeing how happy my guys were, to me that's the most important part.  You know, 10 points at the end of the day is great.  That's wonderful.  But I think the championship is going to probably be settled by more than that.  I feel like my guys, having that little, you know, step in their walk, is good.
 
JACK ROUSH:  The confidence will manifest itself in better pit stops than you'll have if everybody is frustrated and dragging around.  They'll come together.  Bob will be able to get more energy out of them, to be able to channel the energy in very positive ways.
 
BOB OSBORNE:  I agree.  I don't believe in momentum myself.  But any time you have success at what you do, it makes the next time you do that a little bit easier, I believe, with a little bit more confidence.
 
Earlier in the season we won a few races, but our pit crew, and I think everybody in here agrees, our pit crew was not as strong as it could have been.

Q.  (Question regarding Jack's comments about winning the championship.)
 
CARL EDWARDS:  Well, I had some other issues I could bring up.  I mean, I understand what Jack is saying.  I'll put it this way.  I feel like I'm better as a racecar driver than I've ever been.  I don't know if I wasn't ready to win a championship or something like that, but I can tell you that I feel like I've learned a lot.  And Jack has helped me a lot, Bob has helped me a lot, my teammates, all the struggles, all the successes.  I feel like I'm better now and I do understand things better than I ever have.
 
So, you know, I don't necessarily agree a hundred percent with Jack, but I get the point.  I agree with his point.

Q.  There was a fill in engineer from Penn State on the box with the 1 car, and Penske has a Penn State engineer that filled in as a crew chief.  What's going on in Happy Valley?
 
BOB OSBORNE:  There's actually a handful of Penn State grads floating around in our business.  We like racing up there.  That's all there is to.  A lot of guys are getting involved in the small racing programs we have up there, filtering down and trying to get jobs in similar sports as this.  Obviously some of them are getting jobs in this sport.  It's something we all enjoy.  Some of us that are in this sport have worked together in the past back in school.
 
It's just racing's a lot of fun and it's an extremely difficult engineering problem most days.  You're going to start seeing more and more engineers   I hope more and more from Penn State.

Q.  Carl, once the race came out of the red, went back to green, did you feel you were confident enough you could get to the front and how were you able to do it?  Did your car get better over those last 50, 60 laps?
 
CARL EDWARDS:  That was the most nerve wracking time of the race.  Jimmie took off, he was extremely fast.  I knew there was Jimmie, Dale and myself.  I didn't realize Tony was so good.  But I knew all of us had stopped and we were essentially racing for the win, if it went green.  When Jimmie took off, I was real nervous.  You know, I saw that film last week, the end of the race, when I couldn't get him, so it was really, really gratifying.
 
When I got by Jimmie, that was a good feeling because I knew we'd be racing him.

Q.  Carl, I know there were some problems with fatigue and heat with the June race here.  Did you have any issues with that?  Did the break for the red flag help you at all today?
 
CARL EDWARDS:  That really wasn't an issue.  It was nice and cool.  That really wasn't an issue.  I got a sandwich.  Tom made me a couple sandwiches.  They were real good.  I was ready to go.
 
Q.  You did get to talk to Kiefer Sutherland and he mentioned you were a big 24 fan.  You did get a chance to go onto the set.  Do you have any thoughts on him being grand marshal today?
 
CARL EDWARDS:  It was very cool having Kiefer here.  I had not seen him since I got the chance to be on their show.  Had a really good time doing that.  He's a really cool guy.  He's a real nice guy.  Coolest part was when we got to the set, and he shows up in this little hot rod Chevelle convertible, mag wheels, dual exhausts.  First thing he does, Come check out my car.  We're over there with the hood up.
 
He's a cool guy.  It was neat to have him today.  My girlfriend sent me a text and said he was cheering for me.  That was really neat of him.
 
KERRY THARP:  Guys, congratulations.  We'll see you next week.
 
An interview with:
 
TONY STEWART
JIMMIE JOHNSON

KERRY THARP:  We're joined now by the third place finisher in today's race, Jimmie Johnson.  He's also going to be joined on the podium with the runner up in today's race, Tony Stewart.

We'll start with Tony first.  Your thoughts about your performance out there today.  You had a strong car, finished up high.

TONY STEWART:  Yeah, really happy with the way it ended up obviously.  I mean, for us that's a win.  I know for Jimmie it's probably a miserable day running third.  For us running second is like a win.  I told him when I got up here, I almost forgot how to do these post race interviews.

Seemed like our car was an 8th  to 10th place car the majority of the day.  We got that red flag.  I don't know what everybody else    I'm interested to hear what Jimmie says about it. 
I think the track tightened up a lot during the red.  Seemed like our car got better from that point on.  We were too lose up to that point.

After the red, it seemed like our car came into it a lot more.  The longer we went there, finally got running with the guys that ran up front all day.
 
That's a great feeling to be doing that again.  When you get in a slump like we've been in this year, when you have had nine years of success, it's easy to take it for granted.  Days like today remind you how much you appreciate having a good day.
 
KERRY THARP:  Jimmie, your thoughts about finishing third out there today?  I know you wanted the win, but a good afternoon.
 
JIMMIE JOHNSON:  Solid afternoon.  Very happy with the performance we had all day long.  Led laps, ran up front.  Great, strong performance.  Great stops.  I was just happy to see at the end it didn't come down to some crazy strategy with the rain and tires and fuel and all that stuff.  We were able to go race for that thing.
 
Just a great day all in all.
 
KERRY THARP:  We'll take questions for either Tony or Jimmie.

Q.  Jimmie, were you out of gas at the end of the race?  Coast across the finish?
 
JIMMIE JOHNSON:  I did.  We pitted a lap later, so we thought maybe the 20 and 99 might have trouble or something, if we didn't run out going through three.  I had a real hard time getting by the 66.
 
I think the car was a little bit tighter.  I'm really shocked we ran out of the gas.  Thought we had a lap.  Ended up almost a corner short.

Q.  Tony, were you impressed with Scott Riggs?  He was almost to a top five today.  Got the car back in the top 35.  When he ran out of gas, he was helping the crew push the car back.  He thinks he's not going to be there next year.  Showed a lot of character.
 
TONY STEWART:  I think he did a great job today.  When Jimmie and I were racing, we were racing for position in the last 30 laps of the race, I was really, really proud of what him and those guys have done.
 
We got a lot of evaluating to do over there right now.  That's the hard part.  You know that there's going to be some good people that may have to go and some people that are going to be able to stay.  That's the hard thing about this, is trying to figure out exactly what's right thing to do is.  And it's not.  It's easy to let the emotions get caught up in making those decisions.  But you have to go off    you got to sit down as a group and evaluate it together, make the right decisions.
 
That's a difficult part of what we're doing right now.  It's a hard part because you know that there are people that you know, that you have relationships with.
 
I had to let one of my best friends go when I let Danny Lasoski go from our World of Outlaws team.  It wasn't something at all that was fun or easy or that you like doing.  The whole organization you have to think of.
 
But I'm really proud of those guys today.  I'm proud of what Tony Raines did in the car.  Had a great qualifying run this weekend.  I think both of those teams did a great job.
 
Still worried about what I'm doing with my car, too.  I'm happy with what we did today.  That gives us a lot of momentum going into Watkins Glen where we've had a lot of good runs in the past.

Q.  Momentum going into Watkins Glen, you both are streak racers.  We're coming into the Chase.  Talk about the significance of getting some momentum this time of year with the playoff round coming up.
 
TONY STEWART:  Scares a lot of people when I streak through my neighborhood (laughter).  You love to get on streaks.  That's where a lot of the bigfoot sightings have come from in the past eight years.
 
I don't know that really that's a big deal when it comes to going to Watkins Glen.  I think it's one of those places that there's I think a handful of guys, or 10 guys, 12 guys that really like going to the Glen and like going to Sonoma and look forward to those races.  Then there's probably half the field that, you know, can take it or leave it.  Then there's a quarter of the field that would be fine if we didn't go.
 
I think it's just a totally different situation going into the Glen.  I think as soon as you get out of the Glen, that's when you want to be on that hot streak.  It never hurts winning races, and if you win at the Glen, that's just that much more momentum the next week.
 
But I think this is kind of the last   I don't know how to describe it.  Just seems like it's one of those races.  I wouldn't say it's a huge momentum builder with what happens at Watkins Glen.  It's kind of a special event on its own, it seems like.

Q.  I know you aren't racing any harder today than you were last week or the week before.  Can you sense on the track, is there an intensity that is maybe picking up with counting down closer to the Chase?
 
JIMMIE JOHNSON:  Yeah, I think so.  I mean, every point counts all season long.  But I certainly see guys racing harder than maybe at earlier points in the season.  A lot of things come together.  You have people looking for points.  You have people fighting for their jobs.  You have guys that have had a good six, seven months pissing each other off.  It all comes to a head, too.  It all kind of comes together.
 
I think going into the Chase, you're going to see a lot of heated moments.  I think Richmond is going to be a barn burner when we get there.  It's really going to be an intense one.

Q.  Carl, when he finished, said that he and Bob really had an argument about whether to pit there when the rain came.  Was it as difficult a decision for you guys?  He said they argued about it.
 
TONY STEWART:  You know, in our situation, our spotter, from the top of the grandstands you can see a lot more obviously than Zippy can from pit box, more than I can see from sometimes in the car.  A lot of times the spotters can see the wave of rain going across the ground.  I think that was the situation where at least our guy thought it may rain, but it wasn't going to last, that they were going to get going again.
 
I think we thought backwards from the end of the race and thought if we pit, we're going to give up some track position trying to set ourselves up for a position, make one more pit stop once we go back green.

Q.  Was it important for NASCAR and Goodyear to rebound from last Sunday with the tire situation?  How was the tire situation?

JIMMIE JOHNSON:  You know, it's an odd set of circumstances.  From my side, we knew we'd come here and not have any problems.  It's just what took place at Indy.  Up until Saturday, probably midway through the first practice, Indy was still Indy.  Tires doing its normal stuff.  Once we started getting into that first practice at Indy, we knew there was a problem.  It was just too late to adjust, get things sorted out.

I think we all feel confident.  We might have tires that could do a better job from week to week, but I don't think there's a track on the circuit that we'll see this type of problem again.

Q.  Jimmie, red flag, what did that do as far as your pit strategy, deciding whether to pit then or not?

JIMMIE JOHNSON:  We really felt like we were going finish up the race under green.  We saw on the radar, it showed there were some cells popping up, but it wasn't a front moving through that was going to wash us out.  So we just stuck to that plan.

We got a little nervous at a couple different points, but fortunately we were able to race to the end today.

Q.  It seemed like all you guys were sort of    they had a group of front, you had a group in the back.  Seemed like you had to pick which group you wanted to watch.  Right there about 50 laps to go, Carl's car seemed to come to life and take off.  Was that the track changing?  Carl passed you and was gone.  Do you think his car got better?

JIMMIE JOHNSON:  I would get loose as the run would go on.  I was a little bit better than Carl on new tires.  I could get away from him a second or two.  Probably eight laps, somewhere in there, I'd start losing my drive off.  And Carl's car stayed rock solid.  He'd come by, get by me, take off.

KERRY THARP:  Guys, good performance out there this afternoon.  We'll see you at Watkins Glen.