Sometimes, teamwork isn't everything it appears (cont'd)

But it goes deeper than that. Edwards on Tuesday spoke as if he were on an island at Roush, surrounded by teammates who for whatever reason are friendlier with one another than they are with him. Kenseth last week was best man in the wedding of teammate Greg Biffle, who seemed to further isolate Edwards with his criticism Monday night on the SPEED program Inside Nextel Cup. Explaining the on-track contact between Edwards and Kenseth, Biffle clearly chose sides.

"Carl came from a few rows back, bombed down into Turn 1 and 2, and door-slammed Matt up the racetrack, and then to make matters worse ... ran him off into the backstretch wall," Biffle said, according to a SPEED transcript. "And not 'Didn't mean to get down there and get into you,' but, 'Now I'm going to just finish you off all the way.' So, you know, if you drive like that, if you dish it out, you've got to be able to take it. You would expect that Carl would figure, if I'm going to drive like that, somebody is going to race me the same way, especially a teammate. So, we go down to the next corner and Matt just bumped the back of him and moved him out of the way, and [Edwards] lost two or three spots and ended up back where he was and felt like he was treated unfairly in that situation. But I think the true colors are coming out."

Where does this come from? Some pose it that it's because Edwards is the Roush driver most in the spotlight, with plenty of magazine covers and a camera-ready smile. But Kenseth, as salt of the earth as it gets, has purposefully shied away from those things. He's most comfortable in jeans and a T-shirt and far from the public eye. He's clearly uneasy with duties like the pre-Chase media tour of New York, but like the consummate pro he does it anyway. Still, you couldn't pay him enough to show off his stomach in Men's Fitness.

No, this likely has its roots where most of them do, which is on the racetrack. Edwards wonders if he rubbed some teammates the wrong way with his racing style in his breakthrough season two years ago, and the wounds have only festered since. Kenseth is quiet and reserved, Edwards outspoken and forceful. It seems inevitable that two men who communicate so differently would eventually have trouble communicating, especially with the guiding hand of Mark Martin no longer around to facilitate the process.

"I assume that when I came in to Roush Fenway, we had a lot of success in 2005, and I didn't always race everyone the way they wanted to be raced. I literally was driving my ass off for a job," Edwards said. "If I didn't work that hard, I'd still be living at my mom's house in Columbia, Mo. Well, I still live in my mom's house, but I bought it. I mean, I think it kind of started there, and since then, we just haven't done a good job, all of us, of communicating how we want to be treated on the racetrack and it turns into all of these kinds of grudges and instances where nobody really knows how everyone feels about one another. And any time you have a situation like that in competition, you're going to have instances where people don't get along. So I think that I can definitely do a better job of showing guys like Matt respect and dig in and find out exactly what they need from me. I think we can all do a better job of that."

Smith readily admits that beyond Kenseth and Biffle, Roush's drivers don't have much social communication with one another. "Greg Biffle and Matt Kenseth are close friends, and that would be the exception," he said. "I think David Ragan is on his own and Carl is on his own and Jamie McMurray is on his own, and that's an area that needs improvement. I think we have a way to do that."

How? "If you have daily interaction with somebody and they know you well, and you have a problem with them over something, it's a lot easier to deal with it," Smith said. "As opposed to when your only interaction with somebody is when things go wrong. I hope Carl exerts the leadership he says he would in helping make sure that courteous communication, like congratulating a teammate when he's successful on a weekend, or when something nice has happened in his life, or consoling him when he's having a tough time, that those things happen with a little more frequency. Then if they get into an on-track entanglement with one another, they'd be able to solve it quicker."

But ultimately, it's going to come down to Edwards and Kenseth figuring things out for themselves. "We're not going to do a charade of a handshake that looks good for the press without any meaning behind it," Smith said. "We're going to let them work out their differences. They're adults and competitors, and they understand how to work out their relationship with one another without Jack having to intervene without anything more than separate counseling to each of them. If for some reason it would not fix itself in the ordinary way you'd expect competitors to reach a truce, then you'd see Jack be more assertive."

Edwards said he left a telephone message for Kenseth, who as of Tuesday afternoon hadn't called him back. But even if the estranged teammates begin speaking more than once every six months, this may not end well. Often when there are personality conflicts within an organization -- think Rusty Wallace vs. Jeremy Mayfield, or Kurt Busch vs. Jack Roush, or Robby Gordon vs. Kevin Harvick, or Hendrick Motorsports vs. Kyle Busch -- somebody winds up looking for another job. Race teams don't like their dirty laundry shown to the rest of the world, which is essentially what happened the minute cameras caught Edwards bullying Kenseth at Martinsville.

Teammates don't necessarily have to be best friends in order to succeed. But in a sport where the whole purpose of a multi-car organization is share information, having two top drivers who barely communicate can be an obvious hindrance. Maybe that's why Roush Fenway struggled to adapt to the Car of Tomorrow. Maybe that's why they haven't been much of a factor in the championship hunt. And maybe that's why Hendrick Motorsports, where top drivers Johnson and Jeff Gordon are also close friends, has been the class of the field all year.

"We've got to put all of the petty little stuff aside and go out and be the best teammates we can be," Edwards said. "Because as long as we don't, we're going to get beaten by people who do."

The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.