Carl Edwards played NASCAR's "Boys, have at it" policy to the hilt Saturday night, aggressively taking Brad Keselowski out and sending him into a hard crash as the drivers raced toward the checkered flag in the NASCAR Nationwide Series race at Gateway International Raceway.
It was the third major encounter between Edwards and Keselowski in the past two years, and as with the last time at Atlanta in March, Keselowski ended up on the losing end.
Although Edwards won the race, Keselowski dominated the entire affair, leading 136 of the 200 laps. But after a green-white-checkered restart, Edwards appeared to be gaining the lead in the first turn of the penultimate lap when Keselowski's car washed up the track and got Edwards out of shape.
Keselowski was able to take the lead, but as the cars came off the fourth turn on the final lap, Edwards managed to get close enough to turn left into Keselowski's right rear, sending him into the inside wall. Keselowski's car was then hit by two other cars and sent spinning like a top down the frontstretch in one of the more violent crashes of the year.
"Man, that's awesome!" Edwards shouted on his radio after hanging onto his out-of-shape car and taking the victory just ahead of Reed Sorenson. "Is he (Keselowski) all right?"
Keselowski appeared to be OK, but he went to the infield care center instead of victory lane.
Outside the care center, his father, Bob Keselowski, a former racer himself, was livid. "Brad got into Carl getting out of Turn 1 racing," he told ESPN's Jerry Punch. "They bumped, they rubbed -- typical rubbin' racin' deal. Carl flipped out like he did at Atlanta and tried to kill the kid. I'm sick and tired of this. I'll get my own damn uniform back on and take care of this. He ain't gonna kill my boy."
The mood was exactly the opposite in victory lane, and Edwards wasn't shy about taking responsibility for what clearly was a take-him-out move.
"I just couldn't let him take the win from me," Edwards said. "We came to win. He took it from us there in turn one. And, man, I just couldn't let him take it from us. I had to do what I had to do."
Keselowski, who finished 14th, said afterwards,
"I'm OK. Just one of them deals, I guess. It was really hard short-track racing there the last two laps. We were racing real hard, side by side. Carl's car was really good. My car was really good. He had me pinned down a little bit which is good, that's good racing. I can respect that. Of course when you're pinned down, it takes the air off the right side of these cars. It got me a little loose. I just rubbed him a little bit, rubbed him a little bit in one and two. I'm sure we rubbed a little bit in three and four, but just good racing. It just didn't end in a good way".
