On the way to his Nationwide Series champion's interview at Homestead-Miami Speedway, Clint Bowyer met with Carl Edwards, his principal challenger for the title who won the finale at Homestead but still came 21 points shy of overtaking Bowyer for the title.

NASCAR Clint Bowyer (above) won the 2008 Nationwide Series title by a mere 21 points over fellow Midwestern competitor Carl Edwards. It seems the two spent most of the brief encounter recalling the first time they ever met. That was around 2001, at a short track in Moberly, Mo., one of the many Midwestern tracks where both Bowyer and Edwards raced before getting their big career breaks.

It was Bowyer's first asphalt race, and he was there driving a car owned by Scott Traylor, the same car owner who would later take Bowyer to an ARCA race at Nashville Superspeedway in August 2003. That race was the turning point in Bowyer's career. He led much of the race and finished a strong second, a performance that caught the eye of his current car owner, Richard Childress.

But that night two years before at Moberly, it was no Cinderella story for Bowyer, even if it did start out that way.

"[Traylor] let me have an

opportunity, and we had an awesome car," Bowyer said. "I mean, this thing was beautiful, top notch." Then things got really interesting. "Here comes this ragged race car that was way louder than everything else and for whatever reason, had different tires than everybody else," he said. "And he killed us that day. I'm like, 'Who is that guy?' It was Carl Edwards." And after all these years, Bowyer finally

But it was said in fun. The two not only have similar backgrounds — both are exshort trackers from the Midwest — Edwards hails from Columbia, Mo., and Bowyer from Emporia, Kan. — and they also have a tremendous amount of respect for each other.

"It comes down to enjoying each other, and Carl is a heck of a race-car driver; there's no way of getting around it," Bowyer said. "I'm proud to be able to beat a race-car driver like that and a team and an organization like he's got behind him. It says a lot about ours and the people that surround me.

"Carl, he's been a longtime friend from those days, and I think it's a true testament to the stepping stones of NASCAR. We both came from the weekly racing series, went through the regional touring series."

Edwards got his big break when another Missouri racer, truck owner Mike Mittler, gave him a chance in the Craftsman Truck Series, where he ran good enough to get a shot in a Roush Racing Ford as a last-minute replacement for Kyle Busch, who bolted to Hendrick Motorsports just prior to the 2003 season.

But like Bowyer, he still hasn't forgotten his old friends or how far he has come and how lucky he is to be where he is now.

"Clint is a really good guy," Edwards said. "His mom and dad come to the races, and the way he told me the story, he started racing out of the corner of his dad's tow-truck shop, and he's a great racer."

And Edwards, like Bowyer, still has fond memories of that long-ago race in Moberly.

"That day in Moberly, if you would have told me that Clint and I would be racing for the Nationwide Series championship in 2008, I would have laughed so hard," he said. "We were just a couple dirt racers having some fun there. It's very neat."