CHEERS to JPM and Jamie both declining an interview. There’s no better way to put something in the past than to refuse to keep talking about it to the press.

CHEERS to the Boy Scouts and the pine wood derby cars. Some of the questions for Jeff Gordon seemed planted by PR people (What do you think about the spoiler coming back?) but others seemed planted by race-fan dads (Why are four tires better than two?). Ouch!

JEERS to the Slice of Pizzi that just keeps getting worse week after week. Are they trying to make us beg for the gopher cartoons?

CHEERS to “DW has recently found the Internet.” -- “If he’s just found it, we’re pretty much at the end of it.” As amusing as that is, CHEERS to Darrell Waltrip finally joining the world of Twitter and tweeting up a storm.

CHEERS to the interview with Carl Edwards. Show Me. To the point, yes. Not bein’ hard on the boy, just being fatherly.

CHEERS to Elliott Sadler’s way cool Autism glasses.

CHEERS to Mark Wills. So far this year he’s our winner. I think THAT’S what we should do for the ten Chase races – bring back the top ten anthem performers from the year to sing at those final races.

JEERS to David Vaughn being the name for three people. Interesting command to start. And what was that thing Jimmie did? Those were some sad boogities right there.

CHEERS to Junior on the pole. Any bets on when that car breaks?

CHEERS to Steve Byrnes calling Carl’s paint job a “tribute” rather than “retro”. That’s a lot more fitting, I think.

JEERS to Robby Gordon in the wall already, and a new car wrecked in five laps. Mike Joy says he’s had a star-crossed season, but isn’t every season the same for Robby? When will he finally give up this idea of a career in Cup racing?

CHEERS to the idea of the 48 car landing on the Kobalt tool chest. We liked the reaction of Chad and JJ, but the execution of the car falling was the weakness in the ad. They could have done that better. What was that flash of light?

JEERS to a blown right front putting David Ragan in the wall. Maybe my UPS keychain falling off this week was a bad omen for the 6 team.

JEERS to a third caution in just 40 laps, and Joey caught up in stuff that had nothing to do with him.

JEERS to the “meat in the sandwich” being Elliott Sadler. Too bad Larry Mac didn’t think to call him the bologna in the sandwich.

CHEERS to Carl, “I really thought it was his fault, but that replay doesn’t make it look as malicious as I thought.” Isn’t it funny that I saw it opposite? Initially it looked like the 99 came down on him, but the evidence on the FRONT and not the side of Keselowski’s car is proof of who’s to blame.

CHEERS to the first sign of spring… campers at Bristol!

CHEERS to sponsor involvement in the sport, but when I hear Larry Mac say, “… that I talked about during the Fed-Ex Understanding the Race…” Do you suppose he talks that way off camera? Like at home, with sponsor names peppering his conversation with his wife and kids?

CHEERS to David Ragan’s three-wheeler. Anyone else want one of those little scooters?

JEERS to debris cautions creating replays that show no debris. Looked like a couple of cars got loose, but where was the debris?

JEERS to the weirdness of Kurt Busch in boxing gloves dancing around the ring shadow boxing in his firesuit. Leftovers from last week in Vegas? Lame.

JEERS to “When Junior gets up to speed, he’ll be a lap and 2/3 behind the leaders.” What I noticed most, though, was the first part, “When Junior gets up to speed…” Given that he started on the pole and still hasn’t led a lap, I wonder how long we’re to wait for that 88 to “get up to speed.”

JEERS to Goodyear issues, and to hearing the suck-up “The left-side tires that Goodyear has developed this year are why we’re seeing these cars so fast.” You mean fast on the spin through the grass after the tire falls apart?

CHEERS to the angle of the gopher cam on the banking that made it look like the whole field, one by one, was drifting through that turn.

CHEERS to explaining yaw and pitch, and the origin in aeronautics. Pitch is up and down, yaw is left and right. Will we ever stop learning stuff from Mike Joy?

JEERS to a cut tire for Logano, and hinting towards blaming it on earlier damage. These aren’t the same tires as before, right? And when they changed the tires before, we pulled the fender out from the tire, right?

CHEERS to telestrating all over Mike Ford. His driver can’t arc in, so we’ll show him what it would look like if he could. Look up, Mike; you’ll see it!

CHEERS to Steve Byrnes picking “value guys” in his Auto Racing Challenge league.

JEERS to the wrong kind of smoke coming out of the 00 car. Where’s the love? And I wonder why we still call them “tail pipes” when they’re not at the tail of the car anymore. Maybe the same reason we still call them stock cars, I s’pose.

JEERS to being mystified in the pits. I think that kind of sums up the whole 88 team, now, doesn’t it? Whether it’s tires, or engine, or axle, or anything else. Mystified.

CHEERS to the continuing color discussion. Avocado? Pea Green? Chartreuse? I wonder if any color has ever been so scrutinized. And in case you were wondering about Mike Joy’s reference, it’s also “an aromatic liqueur made by the Carthusian monks at Grenoble, France, and, at one time, at Tarragona, Spain.” Surprised MJ knew that? No, me neither.

JEERS to the combo of 17 and Valvoline. I know it’s been years since Mark Martin drove the #6 Valvoline car, and that Kenseth no longer has his yellow car. But seeing that sponsor and that number together just looks like some kind of accident happened in the paint shop.

CHEERS to Keselowski in the top five. I wonder if the leaders are worried to know he’s about. And Sam Hornish is in the top ten, too?

CHEERS to the “beer battle” for first. We need a yellow Corona car. Maybe we can put a “diversity driver” in it, too!

CHEERS to Bob Jenkins buying race cars before he even committed to buying a family car.

CHEERS to Brian Vickers having a good run. I wonder if he’ll be happy or not to see the wings leave the back of the cars.

CHEERS to Denny getting a text from the “other” MJ, wishing him luck.

JEERS to “cuts down a tire” being the official terminology mandated by Goodyear and/or NASCAR. We watched the close-up of Denny’s car when that happened, and he ran over nothing that would have “cut” that tire. Slow-motion shows the moment of “blow out” that occurred. He had a blow out; nothing cut that tire.

JEERS to two cars in the wall on a restart, and no immediate caution? “Somebody hit Elliott Sadler…” Let’s just put the name “Somebody” on the back of Sam Hornish’s driver uniform.

CHEERS to Kevin Harvick making his move. Started near the back, but never gave up. I wish we’d have heard a little more about his progressive fixes on each pit stop. He won Saturday and knows his way around Atlanta.

CHEERS to “The Green Machine” in fifth. What is happening today? Allmendinger, Menard, Keselowski? Where is everyone else, and why aren’t they in the front of the field where they normally are?

CHEERS to JPM who might run out of laps, but surely won’t run out of motivation and desire. I’m not sure I’ve seen that intimidating of a car in many years.

JEERS to “And the 99 has turned over Keselowski…” More on this in a moment.

JEERS to wings that give flight. How often last year did we laud those wings for keeping the cars on the ground when they’d get turned around and the rear wheels lifted up? Could it be, in retrospect, that the wings weren’t responsible for keeping them down, but for getting them up in the first place? And maybe they stayed on the ground despite the wings, not because of the wings.

CHEERS to “Guys, you saw those white gloves take a sharp turn to the right.” Makes you wonder why they don’t all wear black gloves, doesn’t it? Is there a request on file from the TV guys that they wear light colored gloves so viewers can see them better? If Buddy Baker can hide a whole car by painting it grey, why can’t they at least manage to hide their hands?

CHEERS to the yellow crewman trying to put some kind of absorbing compound on the track, but the slippery got the best of him.

CHEERS to parking Carl Edwards, but… more on this, too, in a moment.

CHEERS to a restart at AMS that looks like Talladega, but….

JEERS to a big one at AMS that also looks like Talladega.

CHEERS to the radio replay from the spotter of the 55. “Get all the way to the bottom… get all the way to the bottom… all the way to the bottom… GAHHH!” In all fairness, he did eventually get all the way to the bottom.

CHEERS to Kurt Busch and to Steve Addington’s redemption! I wonder what comments will be exchanged between brothers after this win.

JEERS to a reverse victory lap… or rather, a victory lap in reverse. Then again, it’s better than snow angels (especially in the absence of snow!)

CHEERS to “We were racing that other 9 car today…” The other 9 car? We can always count on Kurt for at least one strange comment when he wins.

And finally,

JEERS to a situation created not just by Carl Edwards’ retaliatory mindset, but by NASCAR and FOX, as well. I wrote an article immediately following the wreck, but in the time that has passed since, my observations are a little more organized. This was not Carl’s doing, alone. Rather, everyone seemed to know what was going to happen, and nobody did a thing to stop it.

Carl began with a realization that maybe Keselowski hadn’t acted as maliciously as he’d first thought. But what happened after that? FOX got a clear shot on the front of the 12 car to show it was the nose that tagged the 99, not the side of the front bumper. That means the 99, while he might have come down, WAS in front of the 12. This was surely shown to Carl in the time he was waiting to get his car fixed and back on the track.

Does FOX have an obligation to show that to us? Yes, I think they do. I’m not faulting them for doing so, just pointing out that this is one ingredient.

Next we have NASCAR. They’ve mandated these cars with wings, and it doesn’t matter how opposed to them a driver or team may be, they have to drive them. Yes, we now realize how the wings put cars in the air, but why wasn’t an immediate change mandated as soon as that was discovered? Why are we phasing out these wings that make cars fly, rather than making immediate modifications? NASCAR has the money and they can hire the brains. Fix them all, fix them this week, and at least until we can get the spoilers back on the cars, they’ll be a little safer.

Add to this the knowledge that Carl was chasing Brad down with the intent to wreck him. This was KNOWN. This was not a “wow, we never saw THAT coming” sort of deal.  Evidence of this is all over the place, from the video that quickly surfaced of Carl trying a lap before, but missing, to the immediate words from the broadcast booth when the 12 flipped. What do you normally hear in that situation? Say it with me now, “Oooh, trouble! The 12 has flipped over!” That’s followed by, “Let’s take a look and see what happened.” Yes, we can recite it from memory of every other wreck we’ve seen. Instead, the very first (and immediate) call from the booth was, “And the 99 has turned over Keselowski!”

That kind of call doesn’t happen if people are not keenly aware of who is racing whom, and what rivalries are about to result in collision. They were watching this unfold. If FOX knew the 99 was chasing the 12 to wreck him, NASCAR also knew. And the time to have warned Carl Edwards was immediately following his first (and failed) attempt.

Instead, NASCAR has spent the last three months telling everyone that they can race old school again. They’ve encouraged rivalries, and some might say they’ve even encouraged the on-track pay-back. They know what gets ratings and attention and puts butts in seats at the track. How can they, then, turn around and tell Carl Edwards that he’s done something wrong? From a marketing standpoint, he brightened the NASCAR blip on the world sports radar, and he did it without the dozens of marketing suits that have been trying to do so for years.

Carl Edwards might have set out to pay back Brad Keselowski, but he certainly did not set out to flip his car 20 feet in the air. He made clear his options that he felt he had at the time: Do nothing; Do something after the race; Do something at Bristol and involve a dozen other cars; Handle the matter now. He chose to do what he felt he had to do. No different than the way Bobby Allison tells the story of why he had to stick up to Cale on the backstretch. If he didn’t do it, he would never have the respect of the other driver. If he didn’t stand up for himself, he would always be put in the wall.

Brad’s post-wreck interview, on the other hand, was as we might have expected: ironic and wrought with hypocrisy. He called it “a wild ride that was uncalled for.” He went on to say that it’s not cool to intentionally wreck someone. He says that at least when HE did it to Carl, “I didn’t do it intentionally.” What can be more intentional than to drive through a guy rather than lift? He most certainly DID wreck Carl intentionally at Talladega, and while I know some are citing the danger of this payback at Atlanta, nowhere is more dangerous than Talladega. For Keselowski to claim his wasn’t intentional is either a bad memory, or an untruth. He had choices, and he chose to drive through Carl Edwards. Maybe Carl came down on the 12 on lap 40 in Atlanta, but once he sat with his wrecked car for awhile, surely Brad’s actions from last April were at least a dash of salt on the wound.

Carl, in his post-wreck interview, is not denying any intention at all except that he did not intend (or expect) the 12 to take flight. I don’t think anyone did. Did he mean to ruin Brad’s day the way Brad had ruined Carl’s day? Most certainly. But if NASCAR didn’t want that payback, they had plenty of time to prevent it, and they chose not to.

Carl is just one ingredient in the recipe that put Brad Keselowski up in the air, and to treat the situation as though he is the sole responsible party for the flying car of Keselowski is just unfair.  

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