Welcome back Rock
I love Truck series racing, and I love NASCAR history. So the return of Rockinham this past Sunday was an awesome site to see. I recognize that a Cup date is pretty not going to happen anytime soon for many reasons (it’s way too political to get a Cup race nowadays, and this would be a small fish battling in a big pond), but I’m glad to see some sort of racing return to this track, which provided tons of entertainment until it stopped hosting Cup races and was later sold to Andy Hillenburg, who did a great job getting the track up to date and ready to host racing again. The Truck race had decent attendance, and I’m hoping a Nationwide race can make its way onto the Rockingham schedule in the next couple years. Even if Cup doesn’t’ come back, this could be a fun track to host a Trucks-Nationwide double-header.

Carl Edwards won’t fuel the ex-girlfriend drama
It’s not often that National Enquirer drama about a driver’s personal life comes to the sport. But that was the case this week when Olympic swimmer Amanda Beard, an ex-girlfriend of now-married Carl Edwards, dissed him hard in her new autobiographical book, “In The Water, They Can’t See You Cry”. In addition to laying out her whole array of personal issues – from drug use to bulimia – she spends quite a few pages of the book trashing Cousin Carl, accusing him of being jealous, controlling and self-centered.

To be fair to Carl, while I can see him being this way at the time, people do grow and getting married and having kids will help that process along. And despite the fact that he is quite protective of his image, Edwards didn’t take the bait and bash his ex when asked about the comments in the book.

"I'm not going to bash her or say bad things about her," Edwards said this weekend at Texas. "She's a mother, she's a wife and someone I cared about."

In fact, Carl said he was very surprised by the ill-will expressed toward him in the book, and that he doesn’t consider the bridges burned between them despite the name-calling.

"I considered us friends and I didn't realize she had all those problems," Edwards said. "I would have done anything in the world to help her with those. Regardless of what she writes in a book, if she ever needs something from me, I'd be there to help her out.

Regarding the comments directed at him, Carl said he didn’t know how to even react.

“Whether it's the psychology of feelings about a relationship that doesn't work out or the strategy to sell book, to be honest it's just weird. I don't know how to address things that I don't remember happening."

He’s doing the right thing by not lashing out, as you don’t want to say anything too harsh and help confirm some of the things being said about you. But deep down, he probably wanted to. Regardless of the reality, he wouldn’t have been able to come out as the good guy here if he bashed Beard. If he really was a jerk back then, he’d have to lie. And if he wasn’t, well, there’s no way to really prove it so what’s the point in fighting that fight.

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