Carl Edwards’ penalty shows NASCAR is backing down on harsh penalties, allowing drivers to police themselves
Brad Keselowski's car flips after being spun out by Carl Edwards during the Kobalt Tolls 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway. // Jeff Robinson, NASCAR Illustrated
A three-race probation for Carl Edwards’ retaliation against Brad Keselowski at Atlanta Sunday is a sign that NASCAR is backing down on tough penalties for aggressive driving and is intent on allowing drivers to police themselves on the track.
In other words, NASCAR is backing down so drivers don’t have to.
When NASCAR announced its revised policy in January, there still was the question of just how lenient NASCAR officials would be. That question was answered Tuesday as NASCAR decided to put Edwards on probation instead of suspending him, fining him or penalizing him points.
“We’re promoting typical NASCAR driving, side-by-side racing with our type of race cars,” NASCAR President Mike Helton said Tuesday. “And that’s what we talked about back in January. A lot of that came from the conversation of NASCAR taking stock of its rules and regulations to back away from the grip we may have on drivers that caused the driver to pull up to a car and say, ‘Well, I think I can get around him, but maybe I can’t. And if I hit him, I don’t want to pay the price for what that costs.’
“So we were telling the drivers and telling the public that we told the drivers that we were going to back off on that grip we had. But there is a line you can cross.”
NASCAR did park Edwards immediately after the wreck Sunday during the Kobalt Tools 500 and summoned him to the NASCAR hauler after the race. The lap 323 accident sent Keselowski’s car airborne and caused it to crash roof-side first into the Atlanta Motor Speedway wall. Getting parked cost Edwards only three points because the Roush Fenway Racing driver was already 153 laps down, mostly the result of contact between him and Keselowski earlier in the race.
Keselowski, in his first full Cup season at Penske Racing, called on NASCAR to suspend Edwards but Helton said Tuesday the sanctioning body felt that probation was adequate. NASCAR has talked to team owners Jack Roush and Roger Penske in hopes that the incident won’t be repeated.
“In January, we were talking to the drivers directly and to the public about us backing away from the grip we might have drivers and their driving style on the race track,” Helton said. “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 that 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 will step in to maintain law and order when we think that line is crossed.”
And what is that line?
“We see it when we see it,” Helton said. “And us stepping in to maintain law and order isn’t always just a result of a penalty being issued or a public reaction from us. There are a lot of things that we do behind the scenes with owners and drivers to balance these type of things out, we think.
“There has obviously been an evolution of a relationship between these two drivers, and that’s why in the conversation with Roger Penske … his biggest concern was being sure that this was all said and done and it was over with. And that is some of the things that we can do to maintain law and order beyond just issuing penalty notices.”
The goal is for drivers not to be afraid to have contact with another driver in fear of being penalized further than what damage they get while racing hard, Helton said. Penalties could increase in the future if NASCAR believes that things eventually go over the line or get too out of hand.
“Historically, if you look back at NASCAR’s reaction to things, we may react to the first incident differently than we react to the third or fourth or fifth incident,” Helton said. “So it’s how much interaction or reaction does NASCAR have to have to turn the tide back in the direction where it should be. That is typical on any penalty whether it’s a payback in Bristol or payback in Daytona, and we’ve had them all over the map everywhere we go.
“But it’s also typical of NASCAR’s reaction to a direction that crew chiefs may be going in the garage area with different things. We’ll escalate our reaction to prevent the direction that maybe we think is going in the wrong direction and turn it back around.”
NASCAR’s main concern over the Edwards-Keselowski wreck is the fact that Keselowski got airborne.
“The bigger topic is the 12 car getting airborne at a mile-and-a-half track, which we typically don’t see,” Helton said. “It’s been years since we’ve seen that. So a lot of our effort yesterday, today and until we find [a way to] resolve it is figuring out how it happened, why it happened and what we can do to prevent it from happening in the future.”
