After two weeks of tension, media hype and bantering, drivers Carl Edwards and Brad Keselowski met with NASCAR president Mike Helton yesterday morning at Bristol Motor Speedway.
Car owners Roger Penske and Jack Roush also attended the mandatory 40-minute session, which was designed to quell one of the hottest feuds auto racing has seen in several years.
While both drivers emerged from the NASCAR transporter smiling, Keselowski said the summit meeting didn't exactly yield an immediate truce.
"I wouldn't say there was anything said that surprised me," Keselowski said. "You have to understand, Carl and I have a mutual respect for each other in a sense we're almost the same people.
"We come from similar backgrounds. We drive the same way. I have a lot of respect for him before and after the accident. Hopefully, that will stay the same."
That accident was a crash at Atlanta Motor Speedway on March 7, in which Keselowski's car went soaring into the air after an intentional tap from Edwards.
Keselowski declined to reveal any specific details of the conversation.
"I don't know how Carl feels about it, but I don't think it's cool to say everything that was said in there," Keselowski said. "Hopefully, it will be productive to where we can move forward and continue to race each other hard and not have any more incidents like we had at Atlanta."
According to Keselowski, part of the bad blood is simply a product of the intensity of NASCAR racing.
"Carl and I have talked before about leaving each other more room, but it seems like when it comes down to it, it never worked out," Keselowski said. "The biggest thing to me, you know, is incidents are going to happen because we race each other more than 60 times. We're going to run (beside) each other. We just each have to build up a tolerance for that."
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