Is Stewart being too sensitive?

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CONCORD, N.C. -- Carl Edwards disappeared behind an ambulance parked on the frontstretch of Charlotte Motor Speedway, then emerged wearing a helmet to board a lift that took him 90 feet above a huge airbag onto which he would launch himself as a human cannonball.

"That was insane," Edwards said on Tuesday as he reemerged from behind the ambulance.

It would have been had the person in the helmet been Edwards and not a double giving a sneak preview of the stunt planned by David "The Bullet" Smith before the October Chase race at CMS.

As fit and acrobatic as the backflipping Edwards is, he's smart enough to know he can't risk a silly injury doing a stunt with the Sprint Cup title on the line.

But if you believe Tony Stewart after Monday's victory at Chicagoland Speedway, there's more risk on the track these days than there is in being a human cannonball.

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Geoff Burke/Getty ImagesCarl Edwards knows drivers such as Jimmie Johnson are going to race hard every week.

The two-time Sprint Cup champion was beyond angry midway through the Chase opener, saying drivers around him were racing like "idiots" and that he was fed up with being Mr. Nice Guy.

Yes, the driver who a week earlier disrespected several members of the media at Richmond and who after Monday's win opened his news conference by referring to a room full or reporters as "idiots" was giving lessons on etiquette.

There's probably a joke in there somewhere, but to his point.

"I think guys don't care whether they make anybody mad on the racetrack or not," said Stewart, who jumped from ninth to second in points behind Kevin Harvick. "They're just going to do what they want to do and they're only solely worried about themselves.

"So we're going to start adopting that attitude. I mean, I'm tired of being a guy that gives a guy a break and then a guy doesn't do it in return, or the guy puts you in a bad situation. And we were put in multiple bad situations by guys that I got a lot of respect for and that are friends of mine."

He didn't stop there.

"So I'm just going to adapt to their style," Stewart said. "I mean, I'm not going to fight 42 guys to try to convince them to do the right thing. They don't want to do the right thing, so we're just going to do it their way. It's a lot easier to not care about anybody but ourselves. That's what we'll do."

Yes, Stewart was on his soap box.

Now I'm going to get on mine. That's racing. It doesn't matter if you're fighting for a championship or not, fans come to see good, hard racing. If a driver wants to race hard for position, whether he's first in points or 35th, he should have that prerogative without being called an idiot.

Stewart says it's about a lack of respect, that in the days of Dale Earnhardt if a driver got out of line they'd teach them a lesson. So was Earnhardt teaching Terry Labonte a lesson because Labonte wouldn't let him pass in the final laps of the 1999 Bristol night race?

Hardly. Remember what Labonte said afterward when Earnhardt said he was just trying to "rattle his cage?"

"Have you ever heard him say he meant to spin anybody out?" Labonte said.

Sure, they were racing for the win and not track position as Stewart bellyached about. And maybe there is a place at times for a gentleman's agreement to let a faster car go by without putting up a fight, but it shouldn't have to be all the time on every lap.

Arguably the worst offender of racing drivers hard is Stewart's teammate, Ryan Newman. You don't hear Stewart calling him out even though others do.

"He races everyone too hard," Joey Logano said of Newman after a run-in with the Stewart-Haas Racing driver at Michigan last season. "I'm not the only one that complains about it every week."

What was Newman's response? "I'm just teaching the little kid how to drive."

What it comes down to is drivers who have accomplished more than others feel they have earned a certain amount of respect, which is fair. But it shouldn't be to the point that those who have accomplished less have to roll over and play dead.

Nobody else was complaining like Stewart on Monday.

"There were only one or two guys that I had difficulty with, but they were racing," Edwards said. "This is racing. Until somebody bumps me or puts me in a real bad spot, I try real hard to give them credit and say, 'Hey, they're racing.'"

That's the way it should be. Sometimes a driver will push it a little too hard, as many felt Brad Keselowski did a few years ago. Keselowski got knocked back in line by Edwards at Atlanta.

But until NASCAR makes a rule that says non-Chase drivers have to give way to those running for a championship, then they should race as hard as need be for the best possible finish.

They deserve to be respected, as well.

"But I know the feeling," Edwards said. "I know exactly what [Stewart's] talking about. When somebody really makes it hard on you or roughs you up or bumps you when they don't need to, it can set you off."

Right now Stewart is set off. He's declared the gloves are off.

Maybe that's a good thing. A few of his aggressive moves on restarts helped him extend his streak of consecutive seasons with at least one win to 13 on Monday. On one he went from fourth to second by the first turn.

"Tony is a guy who historically he gives and takes a lot," Edwards said. "But you guys saw him stick it between me and the wall on that [one] restart. I almost went up to block him before I realized he was all the way there. That was almost a disaster."

Edwards didn't complain, though. He understood Stewart was "going for it." He expects more of the same from everybody this weekend at New Hampshire (Sunday, 2 p.m. ET, ESPN), where the tight confines of the one-mile track encourages more contact than you might see on a 1.5-mile track such as Chicago.

With Chase drivers such as Jeff Gordon, Matt Kenseth and Kyle Busch trying to overcome bad finishes at Chicagoland, the give and take may be even less.

“

I know exactly what [Tony Stewart's] talking about. When somebody really makes it hard on you or roughs you up or bumps you when they don't need to, it can set you off.

” -- Carl Edwards

"Everybody has to do that," Edwards said of racing hard. "The pressure is on. This is the time to perform. It's only 10 races, and if you can take advantage of someone or do something aggressive to get a position … everyone knows the risk. It can get bad in a hurry.

"It's every man for himself, and every man's decision on his own to do that."

Stewart made a valid point that there are more drivers who are prone to come back on the track with a wrecked car and take revenge instead of collecting points than there were years ago.

"Their sole purpose of coming back to the racetrack is to ruin your day," Stewart said.

That may be a by-product of the Chase. Drivers outside the top 12 and not having to worry about staying in the top 35 have less to lose than ever.

But that's not what happened on Monday. Stewart simply was upset that some drivers raced him harder than he cared to race them.

"So it's just the attitude of everybody on the racetrack is changed," Stewart said. "The ante has I guess gone up."

Or maybe because the cars are more even than ever and the number of cars capable of winning is much larger, the racing in general is tighter. Maybe because it's so tough to pick up positions on the track, drivers have to take more risks on restarts.

"There was one time when we came off of Turn 2 and there were cars, at least from my perspective, that were almost out of control, almost wrecking each other," Edwards said of Monday's race. "Once you open that floodgate, once it starts, it could get real ugly."

That doesn't mean it's a matter of disrespect. It's just racing.

And in racing there are risks that you can't avoid with a stunt double.

David Newton covers NASCAR for ESPN.com. He can be reached at dnewtonespn@aol.com. Follow him on Twitter at @DNewtonespn.

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• NASCAR writer for ESPN.com
• NFL, college football writer for 20 years
• National award winner in motorsports coverage