Good guy Edwards makes bad situation much worse (NASCAR.com)
March 8, 2010
Crew members survey the damage to Brad Keselowskis car after it was returned to the garage.
He should have waited until Bristol.
That’s all. Just two weeks.
But Carl Edwards simply couldn’t wait to exact some sort of revenge on Brad Keselowski. Apparently fuming over an incident much earlier in Sunday’s Kobalt Tools 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway, one in which Edwards believed overaggressive driving by Keselowski ruined his day, Edwards deliberately turned the No. 12 Dodge driven by Keselowski on Lap 323 of the scheduled 325-lap event.
He did so on the frontstretch of the 1.54-mile track, as their cars approached speeds in the 190 mph range. The end result sent Keselowski airborne. He eventually landed upside down on the driver’s side of the roof of his car, instantly demolishing it.
“Did I just fly?” a dazed Keselowski asked his crew chief, Jay Guy, over the radio not long after his car finally came to a rest.
Told that indeed, he just did fly, Keselowski also asked: “Did I hurt any fans or anything? Is everybody OK out there?”
Meanwhile, Edwards was expressing concern over his radio at about the same time. He told his crew chief, Bob Osborne: “Let me know if he gets out. Let me know if he’s OK.”
Keselowski needed assistance to get out of his car and more or less staggered to a waiting ambulance, which whisked him off to the infield care center. He checked out fine, but afterward chastised Edwards for wrecking him and exclaimed that someone could have gotten killed. He also said that parking Edwards for the final few laps of Sunday’s event stopped well short of being a severe enough punishment. He suggested Edwards should be suspended.
“Parking a guy for this race is not enough. I think he deserves at least one race,” Keselowski said.
And Keselowski is right.
Edwards has his moments when his emotions get the best of him much like all of us in this world, but he seems to be a good guy. In fact, most times he seems to be a great guy.
And isn’t this the season when NASCAR said it was going to police its drivers less, that it was going to let “the boys be boys” and all that good stuff?
Furthermore, believe it when we say that a poll of drivers in the Sprint Cup garage—heck, throw in the Nationwide and Camping World Truck series garages, as well—would reveal that a vast majority believe Keselowski has much to learn about the unofficial give-and-take drivers are supposed to exercise during these high-level, high-speed races. Keselowski has the take end of it down, but needs lots of work on the giving end of it.
Carl’s story
But Edwards crossed the line, and even seemed to realize it shortly afterward. While he was polite but brief in the comments he made to the media, he apparently told NASCAR officials that, yes, he got into Keselowski more or less on purpose; but, no, he did not intend to send him flying through the Atlanta sky to land in a most inappropriate and unsafe manner.
He was more than 150 laps down at the time, too, and Keselowski was working on a top-five finish. Sure, Edwards might have been mad. Maybe he even had a right to be angry.
But why not wait until two weeks at Bristol, when he could have dusted up Keselowski on the half-mile track at a much slower speed without endangering the brash young man’s health?
Edwards addressed this thought while admitting he deliberately took out Keselowski on his Facebook page Sunday night, implying that waiting until Bristol wasn’t the best option because he might have then inadvertently collected other cars. He also mentioned perhaps confronting Keselowski after the race (a better idea, actually, than what Edwards opted) and wrote that every person has to decide “what code to live by.”
That logic may sound good on the surface, but waiting until Bristol—or more specifically waiting for precisely the right moment at Bristol when it wouldn’t have involved others (even if there were no guarantees it would come)—would have been far smarter and certainly safer. He also could have confronted Keselowski post-race Sunday in the garage, and then just been the bigger man and walked away.
What’s next?
Pemberton said any further penalties for Edwards won’t be announced until Tuesday afternoon, after NASCAR officials can discuss the incident further. He also hedged when he was asked if Edwards definitely took the new “boys will be boys” mandate too far.
“It was a close call. When you’re talking about inches at high-speed race tracks, things like that can happen,” Pemberton said. “It was blatant because they had an issue earlier in the race; that’s how some people might perceive that.”
As for the earlier incident, it was duly noted that Keselowksi was not penalized. Pemberton may not have totally absolved Keselowski of blame afterward, but he did make it clear that NASCAR didn’t believe it was anything more than “one of those racing incidents” that sometimes are unavoidable.
“We felt that it was close racing,” Pemberton said. “There were other things that happened on the race track similar to that. It’s early in the race. Guys are racing hard—and they should be.”
Yes, they should be. It’s what the fans pay to see.
Keselowski has much to learn, no doubt. His history with Edwards is well documented, dating to last spring at Talladega Superspeedway when the roles were reversed and, while racing each other for the win, Keselowski turned a blocking Edwards and sent Edwards’ No. 99 Ford nearly flying into the frontstretch grandstands.
There is a major difference between the two high-flying incidents. Keselowski didn’t do his on purpose, and they were racing for the victory on that occasion.
What Edwards did Sunday was immature and flat-out wrong. He is a better racer and a better person than that.
Now he must pay a bigger price for his mistake, and then everyone can move on. Now he should not be allowed to take the track for the next race at Bristol—the place where if a cooler head had prevailed Sunday, he might have exacted some measure of revenge with far less severe consequences.
It’s that simple.
The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.
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