Two of NASCAR’s fiercest competitors going at it.
NASCAR was in Chicago today for the third (and possibly final) annual street course race in the Windy City. And like the first race in Chicago back in 2023, Shane Van Gisbergen took home the checkered flag after starting on the pole and being one of the favorites all weekend.
And as you would expect on the 4th of July weekend, there were plenty of fireworks.
There was a massive wreck in the opening laps when Carson Hocevar got into the wall and spun out, collecting several other cars on the tight street course in the process.
As you can imagine, the cars that got caught up in Hocevar’s wreck weren’t happy with the polarizing driver:
But that was far from the only time we saw tempers flare both on and off the track. During the closing laps of the race, Alex Bowman and Bubba Wallace were locked in a heated battle for a top-10 finish that ended with Wallace getting turned:
And Bowman wasn’t happy with the way Bubba was racing him:
Elsewhere on the track though, another rivalry was flaring up.
It all started on a restart with 13 laps to go when the cars entered turn one three wide and Austin Cindric piled into the crowd. The contact from Cindric sent both Kyle Larson and Joey Logano into the Ross Chastain, sending the #1 car spinning after restarting in 8th position.
Chastain apparently thought that Logano had simply run him over, not knowing that Cindric had plowed into all of them. Or he was just unhappy that Logano was running him that wide in the corner to begin with. Either way, in the next corner he dive bombed the #22 car to send Logano and the #47 car of Ricky Stenhouse Jr. spinning.
Needless to say, Logano wasn’t happy on the radio after he felt like Chastain took him out for no reason:
“Ross better get the f—ing information right before he goes and wrecks somebody. And there’s f—ing six cars behind me wrecking into me, and then he destroys me from four back. That motherf—er.”
After the race, Logano confronted the driver of the #1 car on pit road:
And in a post-race interview with Bob Pockrass, he had some harsh words for Chastain:
“He admitted he wrecked me on purpose. He admitted it. Which means he should get fined if he admittedly wrecked somebody on purpose. That’s not ok.
Typical Ross. He just sees red and does dumb stuff. That’s all.”
NASCAR is heading to yet another road course next week in Sonoma, and I have a feeling we’ll see some of the battles from this week carry over into the next race. Keep an eye on the #22 car and the #1 car if they end up close to each other on the track. Both of them have been known to let their tempers get the best of them, so we could be in for a fun battle if they get the chance to go at each other again.
