HOMESTEAD, Fla. -- Jimmie Johnson was a rookie. Carl Edwards was nobody. There they were six years ago at a party Bill France's daughter, Lesa, threw before the Daytona 500.

Johnson, the pole-sitter that year, knew few of the drivers well enough to approach. Car owners? The same.

Feeling like an outcast, Johnson looked for someone he could talk to. Anyone.

Edwards felt the same. He wasn't even racing at Daytona. He was a crew member on a truck team.

"I was definitely out of place,'' Edwards said.

His invite came from Lesa France Kennedy, who met Edwards two years earlier after he won a NASCAR Weekly Racing series title and counseled him as he moved toward NASCAR's upper divisions.

She was too busy hosting to talk long at the party, leaving Edwards to find someone else. He met Johnson.

"We just kind of sat there on the steps, and we didn't really have anybody else to talk to,'' Edwards said. "He was a really nice guy.''

A friendship developed. Strengthened by respect, it has not unraveled as they race for a Sprint Cup title. Heading into Sunday's season finale, only Edwards has a remote chance of keeping Johnson from a record-tying third consecutive championship.

While some long for the days when title contenders were bitter rivals, Johnson and Edwards, are pals.

"Sometimes I wish I could hate him a little more, make it more fun, but I just think he's a good guy,'' Edwards said.

Although rivalries and feuds exist, some simmering out of public view but quite combustible, this is a different era.

In the days that Richard Petty and Bobby Allison banged off each other at North Wilkesboro and Martinsville, drivers raced for meal money. Today's drivers are multi-millionaires. Johnson won $7.3 million for last year's championship, pushing his earnings -- split between a driver and the team -- to $15.3 million for the season.

Further proof of how those old days of racing are gone, Allison and Petty are friends and sat together at a NASCAR function earlier this week.

"Keep your enemies close,'' Edwards joked, seeing them together.

Familiarity also has defused feuds, as all the drivers stay together in the same motorhome lot at the tracks.

"You can't hate that guy 38 weekends out of the year,'' former champion Bobby Labonte said. "So, what you do is you end up settling your differences right there sometimes where maybe those guys back then didn't.''

Labonte said that NASCAR even suggested that he and Jeff Gordon be rivals years ago to add spice to the series. That's not his style, Labonte said, and nothing happened.

Of course there are those times when drivers do at least think bad thoughts about each other. Even Johnson and Edwards.

"I know last week when Jeff [Gordon's] engine blew, Edwards was wishing that ours would blow, too,'' Johnson said.

"Yeah, I was kind of praying a little bit that you'd have the same valve springs as Jeff,'' Edwards replied.

That's as bad as it has gotten between the two.

"I think we get warped by reality television shows ... that you need to be in fist fights and all these different types of things,'' Johnson said. "What's wrong with good competition and people that respect each other and teams that respect each other?

"I don't know why we have to be a circus act to make it a good show. Good competition and respect for one another should be plenty.''

It is for these two.