NASCAR President Mike Helton addressed the media Tuesday afternoon (March 9) following Sunday’s late-race incident between Carl Edwards and Brad Keselowski at the Atlanta Motor Speedway. Well over 100 laps down, Edwards intentionally spun Keselowski through the tri-oval while Keselowski was running sixth. The No. 12 car lifted in the air and slammed the outside wall with the driver’s side window.
NASCAR parked Edwards for his actions and ordered him to the NASCAR hauler for further discussion on the matter. Tuesday, Helton explained Edwards would be placed on probation for the next three races and the drivers and their teams would meet with NASCAR about the situation.
“Following that incident we asked the driver of the No. 99 to visit us in the hauler and we made it very clear to him that these actions were not acceptable and did go beyond what we said back in January about putting the driving back in the hands of the drivers,” Helton said. “We believe the driver of the No. 99 understands our position at this point.”
For NASCAR, the biggest issue emerging from Sunday’s incident was the fact the No. 12 car lifted into the air.
“But the bigger topic is the No. 12 car getting airborne at a mile-and-a-half track which we typically don’t see,” Helton said. “It’s been years since we’ve seen that. So a lot of our effort yesterday, today and until we find resolve to it is figuring out how it happened, why it happened and what we can do to prevent it from happening in the future.”
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