I think I am supposed to be shocked and appalled by the actions of Carl Edwards a week ago at Martinsville.
After all, he acted like he was going to hit Matt Kenseth. And Kenseth is a teammate. That’s a big deal in NASCAR these days, teammates and the big picture and the greater good and all that stuff.
Believe what you want — Edwards is bi-polar and turns into Mr. Hyde when the cameras stop rolling or that the rest of Fenway Roush Racing have frozen out Edwards and have been teammates the same way the Earps and the Clantons were. But the truth is, I can’t get all that worked up about Edwards not hitting Kenseth.
Besides, I’ve been to too many tracks where a whuppin’ for somebody was not only a good bet, but a reasonable expectation.

For the car owner, the team concept makes sense. There is the sharing of information. When you’re a large corporation, large corporations want to become involved with you. The stakes are certainly higher, but so are the rewards.
But when you’re a driver, the team concept only makes sense when it works for you.

There’s a great line from an obscure movie that says, “so, this is what becomes of empire-building.”
There are empires to be built and fortunes to be made by car owners such as Jack Roush and his Fenway partners. The same can be said for drivers. There are too many guys waiting around Mooresville for a seat for anyone to go down easy, Chase or no Chase — just ask Tony Raines or Jeff Green.
For the car owner, the team concept makes sense. There is the sharing of information. When you’re a large corporation, large corporations want to become involved with you. The stakes are certainly higher, but so are the rewards.
But when you’re a driver, the team concept only makes sense when it works for you.
“If it weren’t worth getting worked up over and wanting to get excieted about and being mad about, it really wouldn’t be worth doing,” said Edwards. “It’s competition and it brings out things in people. There’s always going to be good and bad.”
So, was Edwards really frustrated with his teammate? Or was he just frustrated with another guy in another car who would run over Edwards to get to the finish line first?
This is a relatively new problem created by the mega-teams such as Roush Fenway and Hendrick Motorsports.
Bobby Allison used to get ticked off at Cale Yarborough. Now, Roush Fenway teammates are feuding.
The team concept, for all its advantages on the business end, is not the nature of racing and when something is turned against its very nature, there are bound to be problems. There will be punches thrown in what is generally regarded as the wrong direction.
This is not football, after all.
In a locker room of 53 players (that’s the number in the NFL), not everyone likes one another. That’s a guarantee. But each of their paychecks and their standing on the team is determined by their play. It behooves the offensive lineman who may not particularly like the quarterback to not allow the quarterback to be sacked because winning is dependent on the players working together as a team.
In racing, there may be two, three or four (five, in the case of Roush Fenway) teammates who are judged primarily on their performances as individuals. For instance, Greg Biffle has struggled most of this year. Kenseth is not being blamed. Neither is Edwards or Jamie McMurray.
On the other hand, if Peyton Manning is unable to complete passes because a 300-pound defensive tackle is hanging off his shoulder pads on every play, there is the reasonable assumption that someone on the offensive line would soon be applying to UPS for a job — and not to race the truck.
I read last year where a position coach on an NFL team referred to one of his linebackers as “the other guy.” “The Other Guy” had been a starter for part of the season. He was released soon thereafter.
In team sports, you don’t want to ever be referred to as “The Other Guy,” especially by someone who darn-sure knows your name.
But in racing, there is no “Other Guy.” There’s only you in the seat. There’s only you in the car when you cross the finish line. And if you get slammed into the wall at 200 miles per hour, only you will be airlifted to the hospital.
That’s the nature of racing — for better or worse.
It appears that the team concept in NASCAR is here for the foreseeable future, but that doesn’t mean it’s always going to be the Disney World that Hendrick appears to be — where everyone is everyone else’s BFF (Best Friend Forever) and “Kumbaya” is sung around the motor home every night.
There’s the business of empire building. But the sport of racing will show it’s true nature more often than not, teammates or not.