Carl Edwards participates in a fitness test at the ESPN Sports Science labs.
Katrina Marcinowski BASE Productions

"I did better than I thought," Carl Edwards said, and he wasn't talking about Saturday night's impressive win in NASCAR's Sprint All-Star Race at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

The Roush Fenway Racing driver underwent a battery of tests earlier this year at ESPN's Sports Science lab in an effort to determine where auto racers in general, and Edwards in particular, rank among professional athletes when it comes to fitness.

Besides testing his motor skills – which has nothing to do with the new Ford FR9 engine and everything to do with tapping various flashing lights and spouting out series of numbers that appear on a screen, while speakers unleash noise similar to what he might hear while racing four-wide at Daytona – Edwards was also required to hop on a stationary bicycle and hit the road, so to speak, in an effort to determine his VO2Max numbers.

VO2Max is the measurement of the maximum amount of oxygen, in milliliters, a person can use in one minute per kilogram of body weight.

As it turned out, Edwards aced the tests, and was particularly impressive in the VO2Max segment. According to the Sports Science group, the 31-year-old Sprint Cup driver scored the highest score on the VO2Max Sport Science has ever measured and beat out world-class athletes from other sports that have been tested.

His "cardiovascular fitness is actually on par with elite endurance athletes like marathon runners and cyclists," the release stated.

The average untrained male will have a VO2Max of 45 milliliters per kilogram. Elite athletes, such as those competing in cycling and other similar sports, measure 75 ml/kg. Edwards registered 65.7 ml/kg.

Edwards, 31, has 19 career career Sprint Cup victories, including one this year, and currently sits atop the Sprint Cup points standings. He also won the 2007 Nationwide Series championship and has 32 career wins in that series.

Edwards figured to score well – after all, he is considered one of the fittest drivers in the garage. He is an avid mountain biker and sticks to a strenuous workout routine.

"Trust me, I've got this athletic image to uphold," Edwards said. "They've got me hooked up to this thing and they're telling me, ‘OK, go a little harder, a little harder, a little harder,' and there are all these cameras looking at you and everybody staring at you. I'm like, ‘Man, I've got to go really hard right now. This is important.'

"But it was pretty interesting. I did better than I thought I would do and that was pretty neat of them. I thought it was neat of them to showcase a race car driver on that show, to show everyone that we are athletes.

"There are guys, I think, in this garage that would do better on the VO2Max test than I did, so that's pretty cool."