Carl Edwards spun Brad Keselowski gunning for the finish in the Nationswide Series Missouri-Illinois Dodge Dealers 250 at Gateway International Raceway on July 17.
I've been on vacation, which doesn't mean I've been anywhere much. It just means that I've spent a lot of time writing about other topics besides NASCAR and I've been living in my house instead of hotel rooms. It means that I was watching James McMurtry and Jonny Burke perform while, for the first time in memory, a night race was postponed by darkness. It means I was watching Brodie Porterfield and Matt Urmy sing while first a bunch of race cars tangled and then the Internet exploded.
When I got home, my first reaction upon checking Sportscenter and the Internet was ... whoa.
Now Indy beckons. The last few weeks have been evocative of these country lyrics: "I've got time on my hands / You on my mind / Nowhere to spend / All my money."
(Well, not that much money.)
The coming week shapes up this way: I'll be "running down the road trying to loosen my load / Gotta world of trouble on my mind..."
After those lines, the songs lose their resonance to the situation.
This latest incident, at Gateway International Raceway on Saturday night, puts NASCAR in quite a spot. By its own admission, NASCAR wants rivalries. Most recent rule changes have been implemented with the goal of turning up the heat. NASCAR wanted rivalries, and, by gosh, with Carl Edwards and Brad Keselowski, it's got one.
Watch what you ask for ...
What makes it no-win for NASCAR is the fact that this rivalry can't really be, uh, exploited until and unless both Edwards and Keselowski start running up front in both the Nationwide Series AND Sprint Cup. The turnstiles won't click with quite as much ... gusto ... unless Cup races, not just Nationwide, start being determined in a rivalry (Edwards now leads Keselowski 2-1 in the prestigious "wreck the field" category) between these brash nemeses.
NASCAR does get one break here. Edwards is no longer on "probation" for the previous incident between the two at a Cup race near Atlanta. Incredibly, that "probation" was only three weeks in duration. The synonym of that term, "probation," for all my 18 seasons of writing about NASCAR, has been "nothing." Probation is a term used by NASCAR when it feels the pressure to "do something" but really wants to do nothing and make it seem like something.
Probation ... ooh.
NASCAR might put Edwards back on probation. Ooh.
The Edwards issue is sticky, but not as sticky as it would've been had the probation still been in place.
There's nothing about this rivalry that separates it from others I have seen: Dale Earnhardt-Geoff Bodine, for instance. When I first started writing about NASCAR full-time, that one was every bit as hot, untidy and bitter as this one. Everyone watched when they were near each other on the track. Go back to the 1970s, and a bitter feud spilled over on the track between Richard Petty and Bobby Allison. If those bygone rivalries seem mild in comparison to today's, it's only because we look at them through the mist of time. All those old-time feuds eventually subsided. This one will, too.
Right now, though, it's in the "knock down, drag out" stage. This won't last because both parties, Edwards and Keselowski, will learn to behave. They will because it will be self-destructive not to.
Most drivers shun NASCAR intervention. They believe such matters are best settled between the drivers. In the long run, history suggests they are right. In the short run, though, there's a problem, and that's precisely where we are right now.
I don't think Edwards is a raving lunatic. I think he wants to win badly, he's frustrated and he's in the "mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore" mode. That doesn't make it right, but neither this rivalry, nor any other I've seen, could have festered without some participation by both warring camps.
Sure, Edwards has a temper. The race drivers without tempers are as rare as sharks without teeth. Having a temper kind of goes with the territory of deciding, "Hey, I want to be a race-car driver." It may not be readily apparent, but it's down there in the psyche somewhere.
If Edwards needs "anger management," then so do linebackers, defensemen, fighter pilots and hosts of radio talk shows. At some level, though, combatants of all varieties have to learn to control the natural aggressiveness and hone it into an advantage, not a liability.
Even Earnhardt, the last of the red-hot racers, changed as the years passed. So did Tony Stewart. So does everyone, or else they suffer, whether by career decline, injury or loss of sponsorship.
One day, Edwards will endure a long dry spell (at the Cup level) like this one, and the howl won't be about his being overly aggressive. It will be a whisper instead. The whisper will suggest that he's gotten older and doesn't "lay it on the line" as he once did. Fans whisper that about Jeff Gordon right now.
I used to consider insecurity to be at the root of Stewart's blow-ups. He's a fierce competitor, as Earnhardt was, and I think there was a part of Stewart's soul that feared a day when adversity didn't cause him to explode. Athletes pride themselves in their fierce will to win. When another driver slammed Stewart's car, I think one of the reasons it angered him was that he thought it was supposed to. It would scare him not to go bonkers.
Amazingly, though, race drivers do actually mature. They actually learn lessons. They act like they're 16 when they're 35, and many never actually grow up. They do grudgingly yield to the lessons of the racing life, but most don't enjoy admitting it.
Racing is still a macho thing. Most men have judgment, but they have a tough time with peer pressure. They are often prone to succumbing to "the dare."
By gosh, I might just climb that mountain and jump off that cliff into that rock quarry.
I'll do it if you will.
All right, let's do it.
What's that joke about the redneck's last words? "Hey, y'all, watch this!"
Edwards has to learn that, well, we've seen enough already. It's getting old. It never was funny, and it's gotten to the point where it's really not any fun.
Bt I like Edwards. I don't approve of what happened in the race Saturday night, but I don't believe he's become a different person. Things have just gotten out of hand. The war has been escalated, and no one has enough sense to stop waving their guns around.
Someone needs to blink.
I like Keselowski, too, by the way. Incidents like this one create a certain pressure for everyone to take sides. I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to let my attitude get stuck in the middle between these two rivals.
And I can't wait for this to settle down so that, in a year or two, everyone will laugh about it instead of yell about it.
They'll learn ... because ... there's ... really ... no alternative.