VIDEO: Last Lap Gateway Nationwide - Edwards Wins Carl Edwards and Brad Keselowski tangle. (Image: SPEED)

The difference in Petty’s behavior back in the ‘50s and Edwards’ today is in the speeds and the possible consequences, and in the reaction from the series officials charged with keeping order.

Even with improved safety features in the cars and in the race tracks, wrecking people at 120 or 200 miles per hour will eventually cause a tragedy that can’t be undone.

Edwards almost put Keselowski in the grandstands at Atlanta. Keselowski was lucky to walk away at St. Louis Saturday night as were the drivers who crashed into him.

There are business consequences too. Will mainstream sponsors continue to support drivers, and a sport in general, where intentional, controversial and possibly life-threatening high-speed wrecks are allowed?

And where is NASCAR in all of this? I have no way of knowing whether Carl Edwards got a warning letter after the Atlanta incident. I don’t know whether anyone from NASCAR has had an “eye” on him his year.

I do know that he apparently will be allowed to keep his win at Gateway and that in the 12 hours since the crash there was no word from NASCAR about the incident, one way or another.

Do you ever get the feeling like you’re riding along in a jetliner and up there behind the locked doors of the cockpit, the plane is on autopilot and the captain and first officer are asleep?

Rick Minter is a veteran, award-winning sports journalist who joined The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 1991 covering motorsports as well as serving as a bureau chief. From 2000-2008 Minter focused on racing exclusively, traveling the NASCAR circuit as the paper’s motorsports writer.


Rick can be reached at rminter@racintoday.com