Jeff Gordon and Carl Edwards agreed to disagree after Sunday night’s NASCAR race at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
NASCAR Atlanta 2013: Jeff Gordon, Carl Edwards have disagreement
Jeff Gordon and Carl Edwards were not happy with one other after a pair of on-track incidents Sunday at Atlanta.
Jerry Markland
The animosity stemmed from a pair of incidents that saw each nearly wreck the other. The first near-crash occurred early when Gordon completed a pass of Edwards by sliding in front of him and cutting off his momentum.
And later, Edwards appeared to initiate contact with Gordon as he attempted to pass him heading into Turn 1. This angered the four-time Cup champion who unleashed a tirade directed at Edwards over the radio to his team.
The two attempted to sort out their differences in the garage post-race with Gordon apologizing for his initial slide-job. That, however, didn’t seem to placate Edwards.
“I have a problem with a guy when I apologize for sliding him and he proceeds to tell me all the things that I did wrong in the race,” Gordon told Sporting News. “I didn’t hear him apologizing for any of the things that he did.
“I tried to have a regular conversation and that didn’t seem to be possible with him.”
His frustration boiling, Gordon walked away from Edwards, though the two would resume their chat a few moments later.
“He just slides on me and I thought it was really out of character for him and I didn’t understand what was going on there, so I did everything I could to not wreck us both,” Edwards said. “So naturally the next time we were around each other I raced him as hard as I could, and then going down the back straightaway I thought he just ran into my door and it kind of tore up our right side.
”He wasn’t very happy with our conversation, but at the end of the day I felt like he was the aggressor and didn’t give me much of an opportunity to drive my race car that first time.
Edwards would call it a “case where both of us were mad at each other.” He finished a lap down in 18th, but it was good enough to secure a Chase berth.
The same can’t be said for Gordon, who is still fighting for spot in the Chase.
With a sixth-place finish at Atlanta he moved from 13th to 11th in the standing, and as the series heads to Richmond International Raceway for Saturday’s regular-season finale, Gordon finds himself very much on the playoff bubble, six points behind Kurt Busch for 10th.
“Our position doesn’t mean anything to me, it’s who we are racing and who e are going to go battle and really most of it is just us doing what we have to do,” Gordon said. “Just like we have done the last two weeks, we have done a good job, but we can do better.
“In Richmond I think we are probably going to have to do better, but we do have a shot.”
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