Talladega Days - Draft Racing is Dangerous!!

Holy guacamole, Carl. I betcha Carl Edwards will, by now, hate restrictor plate racing... completely! Last year, at 'Dega, Carl bump-drafted up behind Greg Biffle (his teammate), in the turn, which spun Biffle. Biffle then swerved down track, came back up track and collected Matt Kenseth (another of Carl's teammates), and a dozen or so other cars, including Carl.

The recently completed spring race at Talladega looked to be redemption for "Cousin Carl", as he held the race lead, with a few hundred yards to go on the final lap.


With young, but tough-as-nails, Brad Keselowski making his move, Carl went up up the track to block Brad (which is exactly what Brad wanted him to do). Brad then dove down , and just b-a-r-e-l-y under Carl. Carl reacted by trying to block Brad, but was too late to shut the door, and began to slide across the front of Brad's nose.


Thus, began Carl's first ever flip, whilst still inside a race car. The car lifted, beagn flying nearly backwards, started to come back down, but bounced off the hood of Ryan Newman,


regained air and struck the safety fence. A number of spectators suffered minor (cuts) and serious (broken jaw) injuries, as pieces of the fence and car flew into the stands.


After the car landed, Carl ran the remaining distance to the finish line. Fortunately, no one was critically injured.


Kyle Busch was absolutely insane with blocking, at one point in yesterdays action. He eventually spun himself out, and very luckily only caused one other car to get caught up in it.

The call-in radio shows will be inundated with a weeks worth of opinions, complaints and versions of what happened. But my take is that this is what plate racing entails. Bumper-to-bumper drafting, blocking, desperation in gaining places when horsepower of one car alone will not prevail, will result in wrecks. Few will result in cars striking the safety fence. Until yesterday, no Sprint Cup car has hit the fence so violently, since Bobby Allisons frightening wreck in 1987, also at Talladega. But, these restrictor plate races will continue to have multiple "Big Ones", as long as they are run. Let us pray that blocking will be strictly regulated in plate racing, and that bump-drafting is effectively policed, as well. That stuff is dangerous!!