Changes needed at 'Dega before tragedy strikes (cont'd)

NASCAR's response

Jim Hunter, NASCAR's vice president of corporate communications, said he strongly disagrees with Edwards' bold statement. He said that NASCAR always has done and will continue to do whatever it can to make racing safe at all the tracks where its drivers compete.

He pointed out that the new car that was introduced full-time into the Cup Series last year is the safest one developed yet, and that the safety fence at Talladega held and did its job Sunday when it kicked Edwards' No. 99 Ford back onto the race track.

“

What if the car goes up in the grandstands and kills 25 people? ... I don't know if I could live with myself if I ended up in the grandstands.

”

-- CARL EDWARDS

Of course, that was after debris from either the fence or Edwards' car -- or a combination of both -- flew into the stands and injured eight fans. Fortunately, most of the injuries appear to be minor -- although one female fan who suffered a laceration on her lip and possibly a broken jaw almost certainly would beg to differ. She came to see a stock-car race and left feeling like she had just gone one round too many with Mike Tyson (or whoever is the heavyweight champ these days).

Still, Hunter placed at least part of the blame for the wildness and recklessness that is a race at 'Dega on the drivers themselves.

"This is a big, fast race track, no doubt," Hunter said. "But our drivers are professional race drivers. There are limits to everything. And it seems as though no matter what, our drivers are going to stretch it to the limit -- no matter what it is.

"This place is wide enough to race on. You saw that [Sunday]. And yes, you saw a lot of accidents. Most of 'em were caused not by car failure, not by parts and pieces failure, but by overaggressive drivers or a driver making just one little slip. That's one of the things here. They run so close together that one little slip can cause a chain reaction, as we saw [Sunday]."

The drivers' reaction

Yet Edwards wasn't the only driver calling for change before it is too late following Sunday's incident.

Others such as Ryan Newman and Dale Earnhardt Jr. said that the new car bunches everyone up so close together and makes it impossible to go fast at Talladega unless you bump-draft with a partner all the way around the track. That is a highly dangerous way of driving a race car at speeds of nearly 200 mph, and makes it difficult to run any other way if you want to run for the win.

Edwards, in fact, did his best to stay out of the fray all day Sunday. He rode in the back and patiently bided his time while others bumped and banged each other out of contention.

Then, with about 30 laps to go, he started to make his move. He eventually hooked up in a two-car draft with rookie Brad Keselowski, and they were fast enough together to not only catch but blow by the two-car tandem of Newman and Earnhardt on the final lap.

The mayhem that was Edwards' airborne assault on the safety fence occurred when he tried to go low to block Keselowski a little late, after Keselowski already had gotten a fender below him on the inside. Keselowski, hungering for his first Cup win, wasn't going to lift and surely wasn't going to go below the yellow "out of bounds" line after what happened to another rookie, Regan Smith, at Talladega only six months earlier. (Continued)