Brad Keselowski: Edwards ‘About Killed Me,’ Should Be Suspended

Keselowski, appearing mostly calm but somewhat shaken outside the infield care center following his crash, said Carl Edwards “decided to just wreck me intentionally down the straightaway and about killed me and a couple thousand people in the grandstands.”

“It’s one thing to race somebody hard and get in an accident when you’re going for position,” Keselowski said. “It’s another to just intentionally wreck someone at 195 mph at a track like this.”

Keselowski emphatically said Edwards should be suspended for “at least one race.”

“We wreck race cars – that’s going to happen, and they happen out of the pursuit of competition and the aggression to go out and win,” Keselowski said. “But they should not happen out of anger at tracks like this at this speed.

“The bottom line is, Carl is an awesome guy – one of the best in the garage. But he made a move that was uncalled for and cannot be tolerated in this sport, or we’re going to kill somebody.”

Keselowski reiterated his belief that aside from just driver safety, wrecks like that can pose a threat to fans. A woman was injured last year at Talladega when Keselowski held his line and put Edwards’ car airborne in a similar wreck – though that was not intentional.

“It’s not me that I’m worried about, it’s people in the grandstands,” said Keselowski, whose car was mangled and crushed near the driver’s side roof when he landed. “While I was up in the air, I thought for sure I was going to kill someone.”

Edwards acknowledged on the race broadcast that he spun Keselowski intentionally – retaliation for an earlier incident in which the blame could have gone either way. But Edwards said he did not mean to send Keselowski’s car airborne.

“Brad knows the deal between him and I,” Edwards said. “The scary part was his car went airborne, which was not at all what I expected.

“…I have a lot of respect for people’s safety. I wish it wouldn’t have gone like it did, but I’m glad he’s OK.”

At the time of the crash, Keselowski had been running sixth – a stellar and unexpected run in his first full Sprint Cup season. Edwards was more than 150 laps down as a result of the first incident, in 39th.

Upon emerging, he declined to speak with a number of reporters gathered to hear his side, saying, “I just have no comment on anything. I think that’s best.”

“We parked the 99 [Edwards], we reacted to what happened on the race track and we’ll go back and discuss it further early in the week,” he said.

Would the severity of the crash be a factor in NASCAR’s decision of whether to suspend Edwards for a race?

“You know, you look at all things, but I just think you have to look at how it started,” Pemberton said.

Other drivers said they hadn’t seen the incident, but it wasn’t entirely a surprise given Keselowski’s reputation for roughing up his competitors with aggressive driving.

“I said that last year because he wrecked a lot of people, I’m sure a lot of people wanted to pay him back,” third-place finisher Juan Pablo Montoya said. “Looking at the TV, somebody did.”

Red Bull Racing driver Brian Vickers said it would be unfair for him to comment on who was at fault because he hadn’t seen the incident, but said retaliation can sometimes be effective.

“I don’t know what the 12 [Keselowski] did to the 99, and I don’t know what the 99 did to the 12,” Vickers said. “But I’ll bet you the 12 will think about it before he does it again.”

Ryan Newman, who has been outspoken about NASCAR’s need to prevent cars from getting airborne, said he hoped the upcoming change to a spoiler would help the problem.

“I hope NASCAR’s got that sorted out,” he said. “I said after Talladega, it’s going to happen at an intermediate track, but that window of opportunity is only at the end of the straightaway. … I guess I proved myself right.”