The gloves are off.

Sunday’s Kobalt 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway sounded the opening bell with Round One going to Carl Edwards as he put Brad Keselowski on the canvas with a quick right. Who will throw the next ‘punch’ remains to be seen, but you can be sure what happened at Atlanta is just a precursor to what is sure to be a recurring theme throughout the 2010 NASCAR Sprint Cup season.

We’re not even going to get in the middle of the Edwards-Keselowski feud here. Both drivers are culpable. Edwards has had a dubious past getting into rumbles with several drivers and Keselowski has been steamrolling his way over the competition since he came on the scene full-time three years ago.

As my dad used to say, “it was a horse apiece.”

While we shudder at the sight of cars flying into the catchfence with the crowd just on the other side, today’s NASCAR is suddenly looking like the NASCAR of lore where drivers gave and took no quarter. Drivers from Buck Baker in the 1950’s to Dale Earnhardt in the 1980’s would think nothing of dumping someone who had laid a fender on them earlier in the race. It was an ‘I’ll race you the way you race me” mentality back then. Everyone knew it, everyone understood it.

That changed in the 1990’s as NASCAR became gentrified. ‘Gentlemen’ drivers started making big money and living in million dollar motorcoaches on race weekends. Nobody was sleeping in their cars or racing for rent money anymore. Everyone was rich. Suddenly, the competition took a hard left as drivers were moving over to let the faster car by and teammates were conspiring to allow each other to lead laps or let them back on the lead lap. ‘Paybacks’ and post-race fist fights were replaced by trips to the NASCAR hauler where the sanctioning body encouraged everyone to ‘play nice.’

On Sunday, Edwards didn’t play nice. To be sure, he should have been and was parked for sending Keselowski’s Dodge into a terrifying tumble down the Atlanta main straight. Our guess is NASCAR will put him on 'double-secret probation' for the rest of the season – whatever that is.

NASCAR stated at the start of this season that they were going to put the races back in the hands of the drivers. They needed to. The sport was getting stale, the races were totally predictable, as flat as a Goodyear tire. There was no drama and there were no good guy-bad guy rivalries to get fans interested and keep them that way.

The pressure to win now to keep/attract sponsorship in a tight money environment, mixed with double-file restarts and multiple green-white-checkered flag finishes, has changed that swinging the pendulum back to the days of smashmouth NASCAR racing. For better or worse, Sunday’s Edwards-Keselowski main event is sure to be repeated multiple times this year as other drivers step into the ring and slug it out. Edwards was the villain this week. It’ll be two other drivers in two weeks at Bristol. And two more the following week at Martinsville. And two more at Phoenix. And two more at Texas. And two more at Talladega.

You get our drift.

It’s going to be a very interesting season.

About John Close

John Close covered his first NASCAR race in 1986 at Bristol. Since then, he has written countless articles for numerous motorsports trade publications and Internet sites. He has also authored two books - Tony Stewart - From Indy Phenom To NASCAR Superstar and NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series - From Desert Dust To Superspeedways. His Close Finishes column appears weekly on www.CloseFinishes.com and www.SPEEDTV.com. A longtime NASCAR team public relations/marketing specialist, Close has also spotted more than 150 NASCAR Cup, Nationwide and Truck Series events. He is a weekly guest every Thursday at Noon Eastern on Tradin' Paint on NASCAR SIRIUS Channel 128.