Was Junior Responsible For Daytona Catastrophe?

Oh my god, the Daytona 500. I’ve been looking forward to it for months–months!–and apart from the rain delay that handed Matt Kenseth the win (congrats to him anyway), Daytona’s fabled superspeedway did not disappoint. One point of contention was the “controversial” wreck on lap 124 triggered by Brian Vickers and Dale Earnhardt Jr. that sent race cars scattering like marbles and swept out a quarter of the field, including past champs and credible contenders for the win. No one who witnessed Fox Sports’ two-dozen-or-so replays can help but have an opinion about the hellacious crash. From what I saw, Vickers basically ran Earnhardt off the racetrack and then got his just desserts when Junior bobbed back up from the infield shoulder, clipping Vickers in the left rear and sending him into a spin that caused a ten-car pileup. But the prevailing buzz is that Junior’s “pent-up frustration” after an entire week of pit mishaps was what compelled him to orchestrate the disastrous wreck, a perspective echoed by Vickers himself (that redheaded stepchild) who accused Earnhardt of “intentionally wrecking in front of the whole field” just so that he could benefit from the ensuing caution. I dunno, it just don’t sit right: Earnhardt typically isn’t a driver who fights that kind of dirty. And from the broadcast, it was pretty clear (especially from the No. 88 car’s on-board footage, which we didn’t get to see until after the race) that Earnhardt had a legitimate run on Vickers, who dove to the bottom only at the last possible moment, becoming the instrument of his own undoing. It was too late for Junior to check up, and if he he’d tried, it was more than likely that the subsequent shockwave would’ve caused an equally catastrophic wreck in the back of the field, albeit one that Vickers would have conveniently sailed away from, unscathed. But hell, I’ll admit that my opinion is biased by my guarded admiration for Earnhardt and my impression of Vickers as “one of those Red Bull Toyota yahoos” who get recruited on the basis of image and swagger rather than on any real chops as stock-car drivers. I dunno: was it a boneheaded move by Vickers that wrecked the field? Or is Junior really that much of a dick?