NASCAR needs to punish drivers for the safety of the fans

By A.j. Reed
Western Herald

On Tuesday, Carl Edwards was placed on a three-race probation for intentionally wrecking Brad Keselowski in Sunday’s race at Atlanta.

Early in the race, Edwards crashed off a restart when he tried to cut down the track, hitting Keselowski and spinning out.

Edwards was able to fix his car before the race ended and came out looking for revenge on Keselowski.  With under 50 laps to go in the race, coming down the front-straightaway, Edwards turned into the left rear corner of Keselowski’s car, causing it to flip, airborne, doing a complete 360 degrees in the air before it came crashing to the ground.

Keselowski was visibly shaken up from the wreck but was able to walk away from it under his own power.

“To come back and just intentionally wreck someone, that’s not cool,” Keselowski told reporters after the race.  “I mean, it could have killed someone in the grandstand, and I know that it’s a little ironic [that] it’s got me saying that, but at least I didn’t do it intentionally when it happened.”

Keselowski was referring to the crash that happened last year between him and Edwards at Talladega.  On the last lap of the race, with Edwards leading, Keselowski made a move to the inside of Edwards coming down the front stretch.  Edwards tried to come down and close the passing lane but Keselowski was already there, causing Edwards to spin out and eventually flip into the retaining fence in front of the grandstands, sending debris into the crowd.

I don’t think that it was Edward’s intention to flip Keselowski over, but no one can predict what kind of a result it is going to have.

At the beginning of this season, NASCAR officials told drivers that they were going to be much more lenient on drivers, allowing them to take disputes into their own hands on the race track.

What started out as an idea to make NASCAR more exciting for fans, just turned into something that could possibly put fans in more danger.

There is a thin line between driving aggressively and driving to dangerously.  Edwards crossed that line on Sunday.

He intentionally came back on the track, after being over 150 laps down, in order to try and get revenge on Keselowski.  How can NASCAR allow drivers to do this?  When is the bar going to be pushed too far?

Unfortunately for the drivers, and in this case the fans also, it usually happens when someone gets hurt or killed.  I only hope that NASCAR does something before this happens.

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Posted by heraldstaff on Mar 10 2010. Filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

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