‘Boys have at it’ decree still alive, despite Carl Edwards penalty, NASCAR officials say
Brad Keselowski (left) and Carl Edwards exit the NASCAR hauler together at Bristol after a meeting with NASCAR officials. The two drivers had their first skirmish a week earlier at Atlanta. // Sam Cranston, NASCAR Illustrated
Just because NASCAR penalized Carl Edwards and Brad Keselowski for aggressive driving doesn’t mean that NASCAR has taken a firmer grip on the reins it loosened on drivers prior to the 2010 season, NASCAR Vice President of Competition Robin Pemberton said Wednesday.
Edwards was docked 60 points, fined $25,000 and both drivers were placed on probation through the end of the season for their last-lap skirmish in the Nationwide Series race at Gateway International Raceway Saturday. Keselowski bumped Edwards out of the lead on the final lap and Edwards retaliated by wrecking Keselowski coming to the checkered flag.
It marked the second time this year that Edwards retaliated against Keselowski. He wrecked him earlier this year at Atlanta Motor Speedway, sending Keselowski’s car airborne and
Pemberton said the penalties were issued this time because the drivers had a prior history. He said NASCAR officials determined that Keselowski misjudged his position and made a mistake when he got into Edwards in Turn 1, and that Edwards retaliated by crashing Keselowski on the frontstretch.
Pemberton said an example of acceptable contact on the track was the battle between Jimmie Johnson and Kurt Busch June 27 at New Hampshire, where Busch used his bumper to nudge Johnson out of the lead, and Johnson bumped him back to regain the lead.
“It’s business as usual,” Pemberton said. “We feel like the drivers have done a great job this year. The 48 [of Johnson] and the 2 [of Busch] at Loudon was a heated battle. It was the proper way to do things; it was good, hard racing.
“Every situation, they’re never the same. I can’t speculate what would happen with other drivers at other times, but these two drivers have a history with each other. We felt we had to put them on notice. … We wanted to do the right thing for the competitors and the right thing for the garage area as far as maintaining law and order like we said we would.”
Jeff Gordon said earlier in the week that double-file restarts and the closeness of the competition make drivers beat and bang and race more aggressively.
“These double-file restarts are crazy,” Gordon said. “You talk to any driver after the end of a race, if there’s a green-white-checkered, it doesn’t matter if it’s at Daytona or Martinsville or where it is, the guys get out of the car and, man, that was just insane.
“It makes you do things that you otherwise really wouldn’t want to do but you don’t have a choice. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing for the sport. We’re not out there to all be buddy buddy. We’re out there to race hard, win races. If that puts on a great show for the fans, I think it’s a win-win for everybody. But it’s also going to make some enemies for you out there that you’re going to have to deal with going forward.”
