Harvick Reacts to Edwards/Keselowski Incident
Despain: Do you have an opinion about this latest Carl Edwards/Brad Keselowski run-in in the Nationwide Series race?
Harvick: Yeah, that was pretty tough. I went back and watched it last night and I have a tough time with people just hooking … hooking someone in the right-rear is different than rubbing on somebody and just leaning on somebody, and wrecking half the field is something that’s pretty tough to swallow for a lot of those guys that were involved in that at the end. In the end, I know it probably won’t be Carl’s fault but I think that’s a little bit overboard, in my opinion.
Despain: It’s interesting – in his (Edwards) defense of his action – he said, ‘Look, he was the aggressor. He hit my car first,’ which kind is a complicated part of this business because of measuring the initial contact versus the reaction. How do you guys work that out? What’s the etiquette? Who decides “that bump is okay but this one is over the line" because NASCAR said it’s up to you guys – they’re not going to decide it anymore?
Harvick: I think you look at it like …earlier in the race I saw the 22 – I was right there racing with the 22 and the 60 – the 22 split up front of the 60, the 60 got in back of him. I think you can debate it all day long. At that point, the reaction wasn’t the same as it was at the end of the race. I know you’re going for a win and everything is fine but hooking someone in the right-rear down the straightaway – I probably wouldn’t have reacted as kindly as Brad did. I probably would have walked down there and punched him in the mouth. I just think that’s way, way out of bounds as far as hooking somebody in the middle of the straightaway.
Despain: Rusty Wallace implied on the broadcast that he thought NASCAR might be taking a look at this. I interpreted that to mean maybe he meant more than just looking at the incident itself; perhaps reviewing the whole idea of “Have at it, boys." Do you have an opinion on that? Is it time for NASCAR to rein you boys in a little?
Harvick: I like the idea of letting us handle it to a certain extent. But last night was kind of like Atlanta all over again. You put a lot of people in a really bad position when you have stuff happening like that. I like to race as rough as anybody but there’s still a line when somebody has to rein somebody in and unfortunately, you hope that it doesn’t get to the point where you wind up hurting somebody or you end up killing somebody and hopefully it doesn’t take that long for NASCAR’s reaction to come, to just get everything under control. There has to be a boundary drawn at some point before everything gets to that point.