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NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
CUP: Carl Vs. Brad – The Pot Boils
According to Carl Edwards, Sunday's incident at Atlanta is just the way they race...
Mike Hembree  |  Posted March 08, 2010   Hampton, GA
Brad Keselowski (Left) and Carl Edwards (Right) had their differences in 2010. (Image: LAT Photographic)
Brad Keselowski lands after his flight at Atlanta Motor Speedway during the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Kobalt Tools 500. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

It could be seen in Carl Edwards’ eyes.

He was only a few minutes removed from causing one of the most sensational – and potentially ruinous – wrecks in recent NASCAR history. He had responded to a NASCAR black flag, ordering him from the track, by turning onto pit road from the wrong access and driving in the wrong direction to the garage area. He was on his way to meet with NASCAR officials.

Yet the fire in his eyes burned bright.

“Brad knows the deal between him and I,” Edwards said.

In other words, this is the way we race, Edwards said of Brad Keselowski, who took a scary ride down the Atlanta Motor Speedway frontstretch near the end of Sunday’s Kobalt Tools 500 after contact from Edwards.

It is an axiom in NASCAR that you race people like they race you. If they let you back in line in the draft at Daytona, you’re inclined to return the favor later in the race. If they’re laps down yet they put up a fierce battle when you try to pass, you’re likely to do the same when the situation is reversed. If they bump-and-run to beat you at Bristol, you do the same at Martinsville.

This is acceptable racing philosophy at NASCAR’s highest levels, and it is at the core of the Edwards-Keselowski feud, one that erupted in spectacular fashion in the late afternoon Sunday.

It recalls situations like the one at the end of the 1979 Daytona 500, when Bobby Allison and Cale Yarborough fought on the apron of the track after a crash ended victory chances for Yarborough and Donnie Allison, Bobby’s brother. Yarborough had some unkind things to say to Bobby, and Bobby entered the ring with him, saying later that if he hadn’t “I would have been running from Cale Yarborough the rest of my life.”

In other words, you settle things at the first opportunity. Turning the other cheek is not advisable.

This is how rivalries develop, and there is the thought in some corners of the NASCAR garage that they are needed to push the sport along, to put more fans in the seats, to juice the television ratings.

"I just think it depends on the rivalries and the stories,” Jeff Gordon said Friday when asked about fan interest in NASCAR. “If you’re dominating but you’re battling a Dale Earnhardt Jr. or Tony Stewart and you build that rivalry; the good guy-bad guy kind of thing; the Ford versus Chevy and all that sort of thing. I think the stories are still there. The interest is still there. But when you're out there dominating and nobody is really your enemy, then I think it pulls away from you a little bit. What we need is Kyle Busch and Tony Stewart to be butting heads and trying to beat one another and talking trash. That's going to be good television.”

Edwards and Keselowski certainly have built the foundation for the sport’s next great rivalry, perhaps at the expense of Denny Hamlin, who “enjoyed” his own period of strife and discord with Keselowski last season. Now Hamlin-Keselowski is old news.

The future of the rivalry is sort of in NASCAR’s hands. How its tribunal handles Sunday’s activities – how severely it punishes Edwards (or, indeed, if it chooses not to) – will impact the color of the situation in the weeks and months to come.

A suspension of Edwards would seem to be a possibility, although everyone can look on the schedule and see Bristol looming next. Would there be interest in how the next chapter of this rivalry might play out on that stage?

You think?

Mike Hembree is NASCAR Editor for SPEEDtv.com and has been covering motorsports for 28 years. He has written several books on NASCAR, including "NASCAR: The Definitive History of America's Sport" and "Then Tony Said To Junior: The Best NASCAR Stories Ever Told". He is a six-time winner of the National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year Award.

The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEEDtv.com, FOX, NewsCorp, or Speed Channel

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