Then his race-winning car at Las Vegas Motor Speedway failed inspection, and Edwards was suddenly branded a cheater.
"It was a little bit deflating," Edwards admitted Friday.
Edwards is back a year later, confident his success after the Las Vegas fiasco diffused any belief that his Roush Fenway Racing team deliberately skirted NASCAR's rules. The cover was missing from his oil tank following the victory, leading to hefty penalties against Edwards and his team.
He was stripped of 100 points, plus the 10 bonus points he'd earned for the win, and crew chief Bob Osborne was fined $100,000 and suspended six weeks.
"No matter what everyone says, you've got to know in your heart what really happened," Edwards said. "It still was difficult to hear everyone's commentary that they thought we were purposely cheating. If we were gonna cheat, we would have made it a little more discreet. I mean, that oil tank cover was blown off up in the race car."
Edwards weathered the controversy and was back in Victory Lane a month later, at Texas, as he slowly worked his way back into a groove. He went on to a win a series-high nine Cup races while finishing second to Jimmie Johnson in the final season standings.
"If we wouldn't have won another race after (Las Vegas), that would have been tough," he said. "When we won that next race at Texas, that felt good just to win another one and move on. That kind of silenced all that (controversy)."
Now the preseason pick to dethrone Johnson's three-year reign goes into Sunday looking for a legal victory that will again prove his Roush Fenway Racing team has Las Vegas mastered.
But more important, a win would jump-start this season for Edwards. Although it's only two races into the year, Edwards is ninth in the standings and has had an awfully quiet start to the season.
He didn't contend for any wins during Speedweeks, but believes he would have finished in the top five of the season-opening Daytona 500 had he not been involved in the late nine-car accident triggered by Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Brian Vickers.
His Ford was damaged and Edwards wound up 18th in the rain-shortened event won by teammate Matt Kenseth.
He was better last week in California, where he finished seventh. But as the defending winner of that event, he'd hoped for a repeat trip to the winner's circle.
Edwards is certain the first two events of the 36-race season aren't an indication of how the No. 99 team will stack up against the competition this year. He was the hottest driver in NASCAR at the end of last season, winning three of the final four events in both the Cup and Nationwide Series to close out the year.
"I know that our whole team is gonna be fine," he said. "It's still so early. But, yeah, it feels like two races and we haven't won one -- with the way we were going at the end of the season -- that feels like an eternity. But I think we're gonna be OK."
Defending last year's race win will require Edwards knocking down his own teammates: Kenseth is on a two-race winning streak, and Greg Biffle had a car strong enough to contend for the California win last week before a pit road mistake contributed to his fourth-place finish.
The Roush team has dominated the track since its 1998 inaugural race, won by then-Roush driver Mark Martin. There have been five others since then, including Kenseth's consecutive wins in 2003 and 2004.
But Edwards isn't putting too much of an emphasis on beating his teammates this week. Instead, it's all about the bigger picture.
"We won a lot of races last year and that was great, but we didn't win the championship," Edwards said. "We know what it feels like to win races, we just want to win the championship. I have a couple goals: Number one, just make the chase. Number two, to win the championship.
"I don't really care how many races we win doing it as long as we can achieve those goals."
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