TALLADEGA, Ala. — There was some confusion following Sunday’s Amp Energy 500 Sprint Cup race at the Talladega Superspeedway concerning the ruling NASCAR officials made regarding Regan Smith’s attempted pass of Tony Stewart on the race’s final lap.

NASCAR quickly ruled Smith’s pass was illegal since he went below the yellow line to make it, but several drivers afterward said that NASCAR has, in the past, allowed such a move on the last lap if the flagstand is in sight.

“I heard before the race started that there was this deal where if you could see the flagman, it was a free-for-all,” Jimmie Johnson said. “That’s what people were saying, though it wasn’t said in the drivers’ meeting. If I was Regan I’d be arguing the heck out of it right now. If I was Tony, I’d say, ‘No way.’ But I hope they consider changing that and just making the yellow rule the yellow rule.

Jim Hunter, NASCAR spokesman, made it clear afterward that the rule stands at all times during the race.

“You cannot improve your position anytime you go below the yellow line,” Hunter said in a statement released to the media. “In our judgement, he improved his position and the penalty for that is a pass thru, so he was moved back to the tail end of the longest line, or 18th position. We do not feel he was forced below the yellow line. If he had not improved his position, he probably would have been awarded second place.”

Smith said he had no choice but to make the move.

“I had a nose inside and my only alternative was to wreck them, so next time that’s what I’ll do,” laughed Smith, who was moved from second to 18th due to the penalty. “And that’s not a knock on Tony. The rule is, on that last lap, anything goes. They always say, ‘Well, on the last lap it’s NASCAR’s discretion.’ I guess that’s NASCAR’s discretion, but I felt I got forced down there. It might not say it in the rule or history books, but the 01 car won today.”

Edwards takes blame

Carl Edwards had one goal in mind for Sunday’s race: stay clean.

So even Edwards had to smirk at the irony after his brief mistake while trying to bump-draft Roush Fenway Racing teammate Greg Biffle with 15 laps to go ignited an 11-car pileup which took both drivers out of the race.

“I was just pushing Greg as hard as I could,” Edwards said. “It’s my fault, and I apologize to everybody caught up in the wreck. We just got in exactly the wrong spot there going into (turn) three and he got real loose and that was just the way it went. It’s my fault. I was worried about the idiots when we came here, and I turned out to be the guy that caused that one.”

Kevin Harvick, one of the drivers caught up in the aftermath, had a few words of advice for Edwards.

“Maybe he should have raced the rest of the day,” he said, referring to Edwards’ strategy of laying back most of the race. “I know his fans won’t be very proud of him sitting back there riding around like a pansy. But when he got up there and decided to start racing, it caused a big wreck.”

Biffle, on the other hand, was quite a bit more forgiving.

“You can’t blame Carl,” he said. “He was trying to help us, and he pushed us all the way to the front down the backstretch. We talked about it today as far as what we were going to do and that was our deal — to get teamed up shove each other all the way to the front. I don’t know if I was moving down or he was moving up, but maybe when he came to push a little bit it just instantly slid.”

Gordon defends Talladega

A topic of conversation this weekend was whether Talladega, with is unpredictability factor, should be a part of the Chase for the Sprint Cup Championship. Some drivers, including Jimmie Johnson, said he would prefer it not be, but most believe it should stay.

One of those was Jeff Gordon, who saw the dark side of the track Sunday as he was caught up in another car’s wreck and relegated to a 38th-place finish which damages his title hopes.

“Of course it should be (included),” Gordon said. “It’s the most exciting race we have the whole season. They’d be crazy not to have this race in the Chase. Just because crazy things happen out there and take a bunch of cars out; stuff like that happens any race weekend. There are all knds of things that determine the outcome of the Chase and race wins, and you’ve got to take the good with the bad. It’s just not our day.”

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