Carl Edwards has been put on probation for the next three Sprint Cup races following his incident with Brad Keselowski during last Sunday's race in Atlanta.
Edwards admitted after the accident that he had intentionally caused Keselowski to crash in the closing laps of the event. The incident resulted in a heavy crash as Keselowski's car flipped and crashed against the barrier while upside down, although fortunately the 26-year-old was unhurt. After the accident, Edwards was parked by NASCAR officials for the remainder of the race.
NASCAR president Mike Helton said in a teleconference on Tuesday that the Roush Fenway driver had escaped a penalty, but that he had been put on probation for the upcoming three Cup races.
"We made it very clear that these actions are not acceptable, and we believe that the driver of the 99 understands our position at this point," said Helton.
Helton added that an additional meeting "that was still being set" would be arranged between NASCAR officials, team owners Jack Roush (Edwards) and Roger Penske (Keselowski) and the two drivers for the next race at Bristol. This coming weekend is an off week for NASCAR's three divisions.
"We feel that will come before the Saturday or Sunday (March 20 and 21) of the Bristol weekend," Helton said.
Helton also said that NASCAR would investigate why Keselowski's car flipped so violently.
"Certainly we take what Carl did seriously, and we'll react to it accordingly – and have, we feel like," Helton said. "But the bigger topic is the 12 car getting airborne at a mile-and-a-half track, which we typically don't see. It's been years since we've seen that. So a lot of our effort yesterday, today and until we resolve 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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