Earnhardt, from the sound bites that I watched and read, downplayed the wreck. Johnson was more adamant, and had every right to be.

It’s impossible to say whether Vickers wrecked Johnson intentionally; there are simply factors that we don’t know and can’t know, unless we were Vickers at that split second.

But there’s an awful lot of circumstantial evidence against him, regardless of what he says.

If you remember, Vickers was one of the first drivers to kick off silly season. He asked for, and received, his release from Hendrick Motorsports and wound up signing a 2007 deal with Toyota’s Red Bull Motorsports.

To limit the institutional knowledge he’ll take with him (and, proportionally, hurt Hendrick in the process), Vickers has been barred from meetings at Hendrick.

So, for the final part of the season, he is essentially a Sunday-only member of the team. That, one would expect, could engender some animosity towards the organization and, presumably, teammates, though it’s impossible to know for certain.

A bigger piece of evidence may have come even before that. In the spring race at Talladega, Vickers was again in contention and looking for his first win.

He led at the white flag, 2.67 miles from his first win. But as he went into Turn 1, the second-place driver — guess who — jumped out from behind him and sped past. Johnson held on for his 21st career victory and moved into the top spot in the Nextel Cup standings.

Vickers, meanwhile, was relegated to third; it also became crystal clear that he was fourth in the four-car Hendrick pecking order.

Maybe there was an air of revenge when the circuit came back to Talladega. Again, this is unknowable unless Vickers comes out and says so.

In my mind, the most damning (circumstantial) evidence came on Sunday itself. How could Vickers drive 499 mistake-free miles, often in tight packs of cars that were nose to tail, three- and four-wide, and then make such a critical error on the 500th mile?

Vickers hit Johnson in the quarterpanel, and pretty deep — closer to the wheel — into the quarterpanel at that. It seemed like a far larger miscalculation than one could reasonably expect from a competent driver.

Again, there are mitigating factors that are certainly plausible: None of us are perfect, and a mistake surely could have been made. Perhaps in the excitement of the final lap, Vickers’ judgment was off.

But to me, there’s only one answer. Vickers was going to get his win, no matter how he had to get it.

The aftermath of Sunday’s last-lap wreck. (Photo by Mark Young/Associated Press)

—NO BLOG ON TUESDAY. Taking the day off. Apologies for the late notice, and even after I said I’d get better at that. Shame on me.