Brad Keselowski came from a well placed race car running behind the race leaders to take the win amidst a spinning coud of debris that was spewing off of Carl Edwards airborne car. Keselowski’s first win was marred by a spectacular, fan threatening accident, but non-the-less, it was his first win.
This is Talladega. Take it or leave it.
The day started out with the “big one” early on, not even 8 laps were done when Kenseth and J. Gordon tapped in traffic, taking out a large number of cars behind them.
The thinned out crowd of cars raced on through the day, but a little bit more of a wreckage happened, taking out more big names from the end moment of the race.
As the last 4 laps wound down, it came down to Keselowski and Edwards dueling for the win. Keselowski went hi, Edwards went hi and Keselowski dodged low. Edwards ducked low to reblock him, but Keselowski held his ground, refusing to be forced below the yellow line. Edwards got sideways, getting airborne then hit by the No. 39 car of Ryan Newman and Edwards car spun even higher, hitting the catch-fence near the top, and getting rebounded back down onto the track.
In the ensuing cloud of debris, 8 (or 7*) race fans were injured, none seriously. NASCAR report says 8, ESPN report said 7 at the time of this article)
Edwards was pretty candid after the race and pointed out that by the rules presented to them by NASCAR, Keselowski did the right thing and did not allow himself to be forced below the yellow line as Edwards crowded him.
This brings to light what Regan Smith said he needed to adhere to. Last year at Talladega Tony Stewart forced him below the yellow line and he dodged low to keep from spinning Tony, but kept his momentum. NASCAR penalized him and set to the last position on the lead lap and gave the win to Stewart. Smith said that by the rules, he guessed he should have held his position and wrecked Tony.
NASCAR was put on notice on October 5th of 2008 about their yellow line rule with this incident.
Edwards said this will probably keep happening until someone gets killed.
On a light note, after the car came to rest, Edwards extricated himself pretty quickly and trotted away. We didn’t know what was up until we were shown later that he just had to cross the start / finish line to finish the race.
And CONGRATULATIONS to Brad Keselowski.
This is a 3:30 minute clip from YouTube, It’s amazing no one hit Carl or that any larger parts came off the car at the fence.:
