This was a classic NASCAR Knuckle-Dragger race.

There will be X number of Sprint Cup fans — the knuckle-dragging majority, I fear — who will think this was just a great day for the sport.

Two massive wrecks, involving something like a dozen cars each … a four-lap banzai charge to the checkered flag at the end … Carl Edwards and Brad Keselowski hooking up in the all-time two-car draft to charge from 8-9 at the final restart to 1-2 on the final lap … and then Keselowski taking out Edwards maybe 200 yards from the finish, sending Edwards flying into the air, flipping at, oh, 200 mph, sailing into the catch fence as his car shed parts — but not before ripping off a big chunk of the third-place car, Ryan Newman, in the process — and Edwards and his burning (even better) car coming to rest about 50 yards from the finish line as Keselowski absconded with victory, Dale Earnhardt Jr. (part of the two-car train that Newman was leading) finishing second and what was left of Newman’s car finishing third.

Does it get any better than that?

Well, yes. It hardly gets worse.

It was a travesty of a mockery of a sham, as so often happens in NASCAR. A race reduced to “who is in the wrong place at the wrong time” kinda mayhem.

And, oh, after re-running the final wreck about 15 times, Fox’s geniuses in the broadcast booth finally got around to acknowledging “there may be some injuries” in the crowd — at the spot where Edwards got into the catch fence. Something they could have mentioned during the first 12 replays when folks at home could plainly see what looked like debris hurtling through on the fan side of the fence.

As of this writing, we still don’t know what happened to those folks. The fans. I hope it isn’t something dire.

But, heck, we’ve got a Victory Lane thing to celebrate!

One thing I do love about NASCAR? When riled, the Sprint Cup drivers tell the truth. They are brutally honest when they are so agitated that they forget to be politically correct.

Edwards, apparently unhurt (remarkably) told a Fox infield correspondent, “We’ll race like this until we kill somebody. Then they will change it.”

(Tomorrow he may say he didn’t quite mean that, when NASCAR handlers talk with him tonight, but that’s what the man said when he was about 15 minutes removed from nearly being killed.)

Newman, who finished third, said, “Talladega is short for ‘We’re going to crash, we just don’t know when.’ ”

Talladega is a track with major issues, and these are the main ones: 1) It is a restrictor-plate race, which makes the cars amazingly similar and 2) involves large numbers of people in incredibly tight packs that invite massive pileups whenever one guy somewhere in the middle of the pack has a bobble and turns someone sideways.

Who ends up in the catch fence or wadded up in the infield is a matter of random dumb luck, or lack of same. Jeff Gordon, the best driver so far this season, was taken out in the first huge wreck.

Jimmie Johnson, three-time defending champion, was knocked out in the second.

Neither driver had anything to do with the wrecks that ended their days.

Said Johnson on Fox: “I hate coming here.” He went on to talk about how good his car was, how hard his crew worked on it but how it all didn’t matter because, in short, those hours of driving in tight circles at 200 mph means someone is gonna go out of the race — hard — without deserving to. Lots of someones, actually. (Including Robby Gordon, whose car hit the infield wall seriously hard, in the second wreck … though Fox never did get back to us on his condition.)

Don’t tell me that’s good for the sport.

It’s good for the “Jackass”  segment of NASCAR fandom, the lowbrows the sport’s organizers like to claim don’t exist in the numbers we suspect they do. Those Neanderthals love mayhem, and two monster wrecks and the leader flipping within spitting distance of the finish line is about as good as mayhem gets.

But it is bad for the sport because excellence is punished, luck is brought to the forefront. A backmarker like Brad Keselowski can win a race while putting a real driver like Carl Edwards at serious risk …

Sure, we know, it’s hard to kill a NASCAR drivers these days, with the various safety devices involved. But it isn’t impossible, and, in fact, the sport seems keen on making it happen by staging destruction derbies like the races at Talladega.

It’s not just the drivers at risk, either. Fox’s talking heads conveniently forgot to wonder — for an uncomfortably long time — whether any debris got into the seats … and didn’t mention that people could be hurt for about 25 minutes … after lovingly replaying the final crash about 15 times in 15 minutes.

If that is the kind of race that makes you a popular sport … then leave me out of it.