Learning the ropes: Carl Edwards' talent has him in a slingshot to the big time.(NASCAR)

Carl Edwards bounds onto the scene, half-lovable Tigger, half-frightening tiger, and suddenly NASCAR is making Gordon and Earnhardt comparisons again.

"He and Jeff Gordon are exactly the same," says Bill Politsch, Edwards' first crew chief in the Craftsman Truck Series. "They knew what they wanted to do as kids, and it was all determination and focus to get there."

Kevin Starland, Edwards' crew chief with Roush Racing's No. 99 Ford, says Edwards is the nicest person in the world outside the track, but, "Behind the wheel? Dale Earnhardt.... He'll run the sides off it, put the nose on the back of your truck ... anything to get around you."

Owner Jack Roush already has decided Edwards, who got his second victory of the season last Saturday at Kansas, will replace Mark Martin in 2006, saying so at Daytona in February after Edwards came from the back of the 36-truck field and won after the team replaced engines during practice.

"He has all the talent in the world," Martin says. "But there's another quality. He's ... unspoiled. Few of us can have that said about us."

Spend any amount of time around Edwards, tall to those who know him, and the words "too good to be true" often come to mind.

Edwards, 24, of Columbia, Mo., was attending college in between dirt track races just four years ago. He was living at home while his parents, veteran Midwest racer Mike and Nancy Edwards (who financed one of Carl's racecars), were getting divorced. "And I knew it was getting to the point where I would have to think about a real job," he says. "At one point, I went past the Air Force recruiters' office and wondered."