Have at it boys? (Part 3)

NASCAR made an announcement today. They declared that Carl Edwards crossed their imaginary line that they talked about back in March. However, apparently, so did Brad Keselowski. That had a lot of fans scratching their heads this afternoon.

According to NASCAR’s release, Carl Edwards has been fined 60 points, $25,000 and placed on probation for the remainder of 2010. Brad Keselowski has been placed on probation for the remainder of 2010 as well.

There are typically three divisions of fans. Those on Carl’s side and feel his actions were warranted, those are Brad’s side and feel he’s been the victim, and those who think this is what NASCAR has asked for and neither is at fault.

I’m more the second. I think a lot of what has happened is Brad driving aggressively and other drivers have made moves around him when they aren’t clear. They’ve expected Brad to let them go. Is that necessarily Brad’s fault? No. Could he do something to avoid it? Yes.

The general reaction amongst fans today was, “Good for NASCAR for drawing the line, now what the heck did Brad do wrong?”

When you look at the penalties given out after each situation that Brad’s been involved with over the last year.

At Phoenix in a Nationwide Series race, Keselowski got into Denny Hamlin. After the race, Hamlin called his shot. He said that he would spin Keselowski the next chance he got. Sure enough, at Homestead two weeks later Denny Hamlin would spin Brad Keselowski. No penalty handed out by NASCAR.

At the beginning of this season, NASCAR issued a “Have at it boys” order to the drivers before the season. They announced that they would be rolling back the restrictions placed on drivers and allow them to show more heat of the moment reactions without fear of penalty.

It only took until the fourth race of the season for this to be put to the test. While racing for position, Carl Edwards moved from the high line to the low line. Unfortunately for Edwards, he wasn’t clear and Brad Keselowski’s red Dodge made contact and Edwards ended up in the wall. However, when Edwards returned to the track and was well over 100 laps down he intentionally turned in Keselowski’s car down the front stretch while Keselowski ran in sixth-place. That resulted in Keselowski flipping in his Dodge.

For that incident, Carl Edwards received a 3 race probation and Brad Keselowski received no penalty.

For the incident at Gateway, Carl Edwards received a larger probation and Keselowski got one.

So what NASCAR basically said to their drivers with these penalties is that Edwards’ actions were wrong, and that Keselowski’s bump-and-run on Edwards to attempt to win was wrong as well.

The argument can be made that NASCAR gave Keselowski the probation in order to discourage payback. That’s nice, but has Brad Keselowski ever paid anyone back? He has handled each incident of payback from Denny Hamlin and Carl Edwards with the utmost class. He’s a hard nosed, aggressive driver that will run you hard, but doesn’t look down on you when you do the same to him.

Of course, NASCAR couldn’t really suspend Edwards for any Nationwide races. He is their last hope to have an interesting championship hunt in the Nationwide Series. Edwards is 168 points behind Keselowski, who is having a phenomenal season. Beyond Edwards, the closest competition is Justin Allgaier, Keselowski’s teammate, who is 497 points back. That pretty much means that Keselowski could miss two races that Allgaier wins and still have a 107 point lead.

Good move by NASCAR to draw the line at intentional wrecks. If you want to take care of someone, do it without involving others. Unfortunately, there will be no compensation for the teams that run on shoe string budgets that went home with wrecked race cars because a Cup driver got greedy about a Nationwide win and decided to wreck another Cup driver.

However, for every step forward these days that NASCAR takes they like to take one backwards.

In the coming days I think I’m going to write a Gameplan for NASCAR, which would be my thoughts on what to change to turn NASCAR’s downward trending popularity back in the right direction.