NASCAR president Mike Helton on Tuesday announced Sprint Cup driver Carl Edwards had been placed on probation for the next three Sprint Cup races as a result of Edwards intentionally wrecking Brad Keselowski this past Sunday at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
Edwards' probation covers the March 21 and March 28 races at Bristol Motor Speedway and Martinsville Speedway, both half-mile short tracks, and the April 10 event at Phoenix International Raceway, a 1-mile oval that NASCAR still considers a short track.
NASCAR president Mike Helton talked about the punishment for Carl Edwards and his concern about Brad Keselowski's car getting airborne at Atlanta.
"We're promoting typical NASCAR driving, side-by-side racing with our type of race cars; 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. When you cross that line in our opinion, we're going to get involved with you."
Helton confirmed with his opening statement that Edwards had crossed that imaginary line and a meeting between the two drivers to ressolve their controversy.
"We made it very clear to [Edwards] that these actions were not acceptable and did go beyond what we said back in January, about putting the driving back in the hands of the drivers. I believe [Edwards] understands our position at this point. We want to get this matter resolved between the two drivers, clean the slate, if you will, so that they can both go back to some hard, competitive, side-by-side racing that is NASCAR. We're working on that schedule, but certainly it wouldn't be later than the Saturday or Sunday in Bristol. It's more of an open dialogue among the two drivers to discuss the issues they might have with each other and reach a resolve that way. It's not as much as us lecturing or mentoring at this point as it is for the two drivers to talk it out and the owners listening to the conversation and their input's important. There has obviously been an evolution of a relationship between these two drivers, and that's why in the conversation with Roger Penske, he asked ... his biggest concern was being sure that this was all said and done and it was over with. But if there's a rivalry that goes on while racing, then they need to figure out how to manage that before we get more involved in it."
