When Carl Edwards is inducted into the Ozarks Area Racers Foundation Hall of Fame on Saturday at the Ozark Empire Fairgrounds E-Plex, it will stir nostalgia for the Missouri native.
Before he was doing back flips after winning NASCAR races, Edwards was doing them at Lebanon I-44 Speedway after winning in scaled-down stock cars.
“I had some of the most fun races in my career in those Baby Grands down there,” Edwards said in an interview prior to Christmas. “I also had one of my most humbling moments in racing, in a Modified there.”
This was in the early 2000s when Edwards was still a relatively unknown short-track racer from mid-Missouri, desperately trying to get his foot in the big-time door of NASCAR.