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DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — NASCAR President Mike Helton said Tuesday that NASCAR has placed Carl Edwards on probation for the next three races after Edwards intentionally wrecked Brad Keselowski at Atlanta Motor Speedway Sunday.

Unless Edwards does something additional to provoke another punishment from NASCAR, this will be the only penalty levied against him as a result of the crash.

Helton said that there were two issues to consider — the incident between Edwards and Keselowski and the fact that Keselowski’s race car became airborne as a result of the contact.

“We’ve not seen a car get airborne much on the mile-and-a-half race track, and that’s something that is very important to us and we want to study very closely to figure out things that we can do to help prevent this very quickly in the future,” Helton said during a teleconference Tuesday. “Obviously the 12 car getting airborne to us is a much more serious topic right now. Certainly we take what Carl did seriously, and we’ll react to it accordingly and have, we feel like.”

The clash between Edwards and Keselowski comes on the heels of NASCAR telling the drivers to “have at it” prior to the start of the season, essentially telling them they were allowed to police themselves.

“We were telling the drivers and telling the public that we told the drivers that we were going to back off on that grip we had,” Helton said. “But there is a line you can cross. When you cross that line in our opinion, we’re going to get involved with you.”

After Edwards sent Keselowski flying, NASCAR quickly responded by pulling the scorecard of the No. 99 Ford and ordering Edwards to the garage. Edwards was then summoned to the NASCAR hauler for a discussion with NASCAR officials.

Helton also said that NASCAR is working to arrange a meeting between NASCAR officials, team owners Jack Roush and Roger Penske and the two drivers to try and settle any issues between them.

That meeting is expected to take place sometime prior to the Food City 500 at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway March 21.