Alright folks, let's settle this down a bit shall we?

First off, both Tony Stewart and Kyle Busch are two of the greatest, most talented stock car drivers on the planet today. If they weren't, they wouldn't be in the rides that they're in, nor would they have had the success that they have had.

Secondly, what happened on the final straightaway at Daytona was Kyle moving to block Stewart after Stewart had already passed his right rear fender by a few inches, and when Kyle moved up, Kyle sent himself crashing into the wall. There wasn't anywhere close to enough time for Kyle to have realized that Stewart had crawled past his fender a bit between his first block and his second block to know not to cut back to the right or he would have wrecked. That's the deal. Watch the replay, and that's what you'll see.

So where does that leave us? It was a racin' deal. No one deliberately wrecked anyone.

Now regarding safety, I don't think anyone deserves critcism regarding safety here. The walls did their job. The cars did their job. The drivers did their job in that it is up to them to fight as hard as they can to win. (As stated above, Kyle couldn't have known his second block would send him crashing into the wall.) The only commentary I have regarding safety is that I wish Daytona would eliminate the ability for fans to stand right next to the catch fence while cars are racing. Many tracks have already done this, and I think Daytona's stuck in the past a bit here. While fans may not like it too much, after having seen other tracks doing this for safety, I think it is the right thing to do to keep fans safe. I hope Daytona decides to do this soon.

As for NASCAR, while it is their job to ensure safety, it is NOT their job to regulate how drivers race outside of certain obvious areas like deliberately wrecking someone. That area is for drivers to police themselves in, and they do a good job of that overall. There's no reason why this wreck should be used in a trumpeting call for no blocking in NASCAR as has been imposed, to their detriment IMO, in other forms of auto racing.

Now with that all said, I'd especially like to see this discussion move out of the elementary school playground and into the more grown-up table if you guys wouldn't mind. The use of punctuation, spelling would be appreciated. An end to comments such as "Kyle Busch couldn't drive a go-kart" would also be appreciated as they are detrimental to the discussion we're trying to have here. Thanks.

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