NASCAR Great Carl Edwards Explains The Origin Of His Signature Backflip Celebration

There are a lot of iconic celebrations from around the world of motorsports. You've got Ross Chastain smashing a watermelon (which we saw just this past weekend), Kyle Busch's trademark bow, and Helio Castroneves scaling the fence at Indianapolis Motor Speedway after winning the Indy 500 just to name a few.

However, I think Carl Edwards' backflip is quite possibly my favorite.

Perhaps he has talked about it before, but I had never heard the origin story of the most famous backflip in racing until I saw a video of Edwards explaining it ahead of a broadcast on TruTV and Max for the NASCAR Playoffs.

"Alright, so the backflip origin story," the 45-year-old who hung up his helmet in 2017 said. "I was watching a World of Outlaws race, this guy won the race, he got out, did a backflip. It was Tyler Walker.

"I was like, ‘This is the craziest thing ever.’"

Wait… so Edwards copied someone's homework to create one of the most iconic celebrations ever?!

Meh, he's giving credit to Walker so who cares? It's still super badass.

Carl Edwards performs his signature backflip after winning the NASCAR Nationwide Series O'Reilly Auto Parts 300 at Texas Motor Speedway on April 8, 2011 in Fort Worth, Texas.  (Photo by Jonathan Ferrey/Getty Images for NASCAR)

"So cool, so I started doing it at Capital Speedway in Holts Summit (Missouri) in the dirt car, and then was fortunate enough to win our first race in the No. 99 truck in Kentucky and I thought, "Why not?"

Edwards went on to explain what it was like pulling off the iconic backflip, which was probably the only thing cooler than watching it.

"You're standing there and the crowd's cheering and you've just won a race, it was just a perfect expression for just how excited I was."

Edwards said he wasn't sure how many flips he had done — he won 28 races in the Cup Series, 38 in the Xfinity Series, and another 6 in the Truck Series, so do the math; Carl was probably starting to get a bit dizzy — but he said that he hasn't pulled off his iconic celebration in a while.

That's a shame because I was hoping that the backflip was a move that Edwards still broke out from time to time at parties.