Followup on yesterday's race

Looks like NASCAR's in a box now. They said that drivers would police themselves. Well, Carl Edwards just did. Granted, the end result was a flying crash, but what if Brad's car had stayed on 4 wheels and just spun out? Then we're talking about payback and nobody's calling for Carl's head. That's the problem. If they can hit and wreck each other, you can't really talk about the way the wreck happens. For what it's worth, Carl hit him in the straightaway (not in a turn) and put him into the SAFER barrier. Bad Things happened to the #12 afterwards, but that's the randomness of physics. If I'm going to punish him for anything, it's for going the wrong way down pit lane.

My verdict? A fine for that (stupid move) and "double-secret probation" for the rest of the year for dumping Kesolowski. Not so much because I'm a huge Edwards fan but because that's the boundary that NASCAR set. And at the driver's meeting in Bristol 2 weeks from now? "Gentlemen, now you know where the line is. We don't want anybody else over it, or they're going to be staying at home for a while." That ought to tamp things down.

(Update 3/13/10: A draft of this was published on Yahoo Sports - link is here)