NASCAR star joins new team after STUNNING retirement

A NASCAR hall of famer will be returning to the sport this season, after his surprise retirement in 2016.

Carl Edwards' exit from the sport nearly a decade ago took many fans and insiders by surprise, with the 45-year-old apparently carefully measuring up his eventual chance to come back to the Cup Series.

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Surprisingly, the offer that's tempted him back to the sport didn't come from an actual racing team, but from Amazon, who are upping their coverage of the sport this year.

Cup Series practice and qualifying are being shown on Prime Video for the majority of the season, with five consecutive races being shown on the global streaming platform starting with the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway on Memorial Day Weekend.

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Is Carl Edwards back in NASCAR?

Speaking to The Athletic ahead of this week's announcement, Edwards said: "The thing I’m excited about, and I feel like I can hopefully accomplish, is to get to talk a little bit about — especially since I’m not competing anymore, I got nothing to hide — there’s no trade secrets I don’t want to talk about.

"I want to share with the fans what might be going on inside of that helmet, inside of that car. I want to ask the drivers, before, after, maybe away from the track, ‘What’s going on? What is really driving you? What are your fears? What are your hopes? What are the difficulties? What are the things that you’re so good at that maybe aren’t obvious for someone just watching the racing?"'

The 28-time Cup Series race winner admitted to a concern about criticizing his former colleagues and rivals on air, admitting: "That actually is one of the things I’m most worried about. I’m hopeful that I have relationships with people in the sport where I’m able to objectively say, ‘Hey, this is what I see without judgment.’

"I hope that that’s acceptable to them. I hope I can do it in a way that respects how difficult it is to be a competitor. Because, for me as a competitor, it would piss me off when people would have all sorts of judgment and critiques without actually maybe A) understanding or B) giving me a chance to tell my part."

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