Racing News Digest

Last weekend at Atlanta Motor Speedway Carl Edwards deliberately sent Brad Keselowski spinning where Brad went upside down and landed on the outside retaining wall.

NASCAR has ruled on the incident and placed Carl Edwards on probation for the next 3 races. No points penalty, no fines…nothing.

Prior to this season NASCAR had said it was going to back off penalizing the drivers and basically let them police themselves. The big question was how lenient they were going to be.

I think that question has been answered.

Q: Mike, when you’ve talked about drivers policing themselves as you did in January, do you mean not just being allowed to retaliate, but how and when? What I mean by that is with the rash of airborne cars there have been over the past year, do you think drivers will be less inclined to do paybacks the way Edwards did in Atlanta?

MIKE HELTON: Well, you’d have to ask the drivers what their opinions are after Sunday and seeing the 12 car get airborne in Atlanta. But in January, we were talking to the drivers directly and to the public about us backing away from the grip we might have on drivers and their driving style on the racetrack.

Throughout our history, we’ve seen incidents on the track where they were obviously a simple racing accident, some that were obviously intentional, some that we couldn’t tell the difference on and may not have been able to react to.

But the clear message, I think, we sent in January was that we were willing to put more responsibility in the hands of the driver. But there is a line you can cross and we’ll step in to maintain law and order when we think that line’s crossed.

I have to admit I have a little bit of mixed feelings on this one. I am 100% behind NASCAR’s position on letting the drivers be drivers and staying off their backs so they can race and be themselves.

On the other hand, this was a pretty serious accident. And while Carl Edwards may have only intended to spin Brad out, he should have been thinking clearly enough to realize the potential risks of trying something like that at a track with speeds like Atlanta Motor Speedway has.

I guess ultimately I am going to stick with the position that I like NASCAR not being all over these guys. We’ll see how that goes.

The following question is a great question because I really believe that if Brad Keselowski’s #12 had not got airborne then this would not be a topic for conversation. Except that everyone would be hailing NASCAR for not butting in.

Q: If the 12 car doesn’t get turned around backwards and airborne, are we even having this conversation some?

MIKE HELTON: Well, I think I’d ask you all that question and put it back in your hands. Obviously the 12 car getting airborne to us is a much more serious topic right now. Certainly we take what Carl did seriously, and we’ll react to it accordingly and have, we feel like.

But the bigger topic is the 12 car getting airborne at a mile-and-a-half track which we typically don’t see. It’s been years since we’ve seen that. So a lot of our effort yesterday, today and until we find resolve to it is figuring out how it happened, why it happened and what we can do to prevent it from happening in the future.

In a very blatant and obvious fashion Carl Edwards took out some kind of revenge on Brad Keselowski yesterday causing Brad to spin, get airborne, flip upside down and land upside down on the outside wall.

The whole wreck was pretty ugly.

BRAD KESELOWSKI

“He just decided to wreck me intentionally down the straightaway and about killed me and a couple of thousand people in the grandstands,” Keselowski calmly said after exiting the infield medical center.

“It is one thing to race somebody hard and to get in an accident going for position. It’s another to intentionally wreck somebody at 190 miles an hour.”

“He intentionally swung at me three times down the straightaway and couldn’t get the job done because I knew he was doing it,” Keselowski said. “I cut him a lot of slack trying to give him a chance to get his anger out and it wasn’t enough for him.

“He pulled off pit road with one intention in mind. And he got it done and about killed a bunch of people in the process.”

“Carl is an awesome guy, one of the best people in the garage,” Keselowski said. “But in the car, he made a move that is uncalled for and cannot be tolerated in this sport or we’re going to kill somebody.

“It’s not me I’m worried about. It’s the people in the grandstand while I was up in the air that I thought for sure I was going to kill.”

CARL EDWARDS

“Brad knows the deal between him and I,” Edwards said. “The scary part was his car went airborne, which was not at all what I expected. At the end of the day, we’re out here to race and people have to have respect for one another and I have a lot of respect for people’s safety.

“I wish it wouldn’t have gone like it did, but I’m glad he’s OK and we’ll just go on and race some more and maybe him and I won’t get in anymore incidents together.”

The biggest thing that caught my attention was how blatant Carl Edwards was. He didn’t try hiding the fact that he was trying to wreck Keselowski. He didn’t try doing something made it look like he got loose and hit Brad.

Nope, he just flat out wrecked him. And on the lap prior to the accident….Carl had tried the same thing but missed.

This was a very serious crash as you can see from the video. Although there were only 4 laps left in the race (at the time…it turned out to be more with additional green/white/checkered restarts) NASCAR made the right call by parking Carl Edwards. Something like that is just unnecessary.

Now, I don’t think Carl meant for all that to happen. I believe Carl when he says that he just wanted to send Brad spinning…..not airborne.

But every action has a consequence and this one sure did.

And don’t get me wrong. I am all for guys beating on each on the track. And little banging back and forth. It’s part of racing. Part of the frustration on the track. Something like that could end up in someone spinning, but I still look at as something a little different than what Carl did.

And, if all that happened would have been Brad spinning…..this wouldn’t even be an issue probably.

With a crazy and fun last couple of laps (and restarts) Kurt Busch held on to grab his first checkered flag of 2010. On second go of the green/white/checkered restart, Kurt Busch got a great start while Juan Pablo Montoya spun his tires loosing his chance to get around Kurt.

“Our Dodge was set up for being a utility‑type car,” Busch, who won his 21st Cup race, said. “What I mean by that is it was good on long runs, good in the middle runs and good on the short runs.

“We weren’t excellent in any area, but good overall with the different stints you have to run on tires.”

Busch claimed the 21st victory of his career and his first with crew chief Steve Addington, who joined Penske Racing during the offseason after guiding Busch’s brother, Kyle, to 12 victories in 2008 and ‘09 with Joe Gibbs Racing.

“With Steve Addington, all of his new ideas, I never knew how we could mesh them together and how soon we were able to do it,” Busch said. “Even on those restarts at the end, I just felt like we had the car to beat.”

Kurt Busch, Juan Pablo Montoya and Kasey Kahne dominated the show today. Kasey Kahne led the most laps with 143 with Kurt Busch leading the second most at 130. While Juan Pablo Montoya only led 3 laps, it was catching Kurt Busch in a hurry until the caution came out setting up the double green/white/checkered.

Setting up the 2 green/white/checkered restarts was Carl Edwards flipping Brad Keselowski. Why did he do that? I really couldn’t tell you. But it was a nasty wreck where Brad Keselowski went airborne and for the most part landed upside down on on the outside wall.

The 2 had kind of tangled earlier where Carl later admitted it looked like it was not Brad’s fault. None the less Carl Edwards took out Brad Keselowski and had even tried to do the same thing the lap before the accident.

NASCAR parked Carl Edwards for the remaining 4 laps and told him to report to the trailer.

Pole Sitter Dale Earnhardt Jr. lost the lead on the first lap. But he looked strong and was running up front for most of the day until a little after lap 100 he started having a weird tire problem. He said that it felt like he had a loose tire but the pit crew could not find anything wrong.

Jr wasn’t the only car in the Hendrick stable with tire issues. Mark Martin blew a tire sending him thorough the infield spinning. Jeff Gordon had problems as well. Gordon had said all he could do to save his tires was to slow down.

“I’m not going to put any blame on anybody right now,” Gordon said. “We have to look at everything that we had versus our teammates and stuff. It’s one of those things where when they come here and test, you expect them to build a tire that we can abuse and that we can race hard with.

“That obviously wasn’t the case, so there is a very good chance we were too aggressive, but until we go back and analyze everything it’s hard to say.”

Atlanta Motor Speedway UNOFFICIAL Results
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