NASCAR president Mike Helton announced that Carl Edwards would be placed on probation for 3 races.

NASCAR president Mike Helton announced on Tuesday that Carl Edwards would not be suspended from competition after intentionally wrecking Brad Keselowski in Sunday’s Kobalt Tools 500. Edwards was placed on probation for the next 3 races

Edwards deliberately wrecked Keselowski in the final laps at Atlanta Motor Speedway in retaliation to an earlier incident in which Keselowski wrecked Edwards and took him out of contention.Edwards’ contact sent Keselowski’s #12 MOPAR Dodge flying.

“Following incident, we asked 99 to join us in hauler, made it clear that those actions were not acceptable,” Helton said. “We plan on meeting with both drivers and both owners so they can clean the slate so they can get back to hard racing.”

Helton also stated that the penalties are a result only of the incident at Atlanta. Prior altercations between the two were not taken into account. “Our reaction Sunday afternoon and the probation is the result of the single incident that happened between the 99 and the 12.”

Even after NASCAR parked him, Edwards remained unrepentant for his actions.

“Brad knows the deal between him and I. Scary part is the car went airbornee, and that’s not at all what I expected.”

Immediately after the race, there was an outcry to severely punish Edwards for his actions, particularly by Keselowski himself.

“It’ll be interesting to see how NASCAR reacts to it,” he said after the wreck. “They have the ball. If they’re going to allow people to intentionally wreck each other at tracks this fast, we will hurt someone either in the cars or the grandstands. It’s not cool to intentionally wreck someone at 195 mph.”

The wreck on Sunday was NASCAR’s first big test of the “have at it, boys” policy, which the sanctioning body had announced in January. NASCAR announced its plans to loosen its reigns on drivers after fans had complained that NASCAR’s restriction’s had “watered down” the action on the track.

When asked what the limit will be to the “self-policing” on the track, Helton said, “We’ll escalate our reaction to prevent the direction maybe we think is going in the wrong direction.”

Helton made it clear that the bigger issue is why the #12 got airborne. “We have to seperate the issues between the 99 and the 12, and the fact that the 12 went airborne.The car getting airborne was a very serious issue.”

NASCAR took Keselowski’s Dodge back to the R&D center and is reviewing the crash data to prevent cars from flipping again.

 Loading ...

Bookmark It

Hide Sites