You love to see it.
NASCAR will not penalize Cup Series drivers Ryan Blaney and Carson Hocevar for their fight on pit road Saturday night at Bristol after a run-in during the Bass Pro Shops Night Race.
The wild scene unfolded at the end of a chaotic race that saw Blaney lead 202 laps and run up front for most of the night. His night came to an early end though, after Blaney passed Hocevar for 2nd place on lap 457.
As the #77 car went inside to try to get back underneath him going into the corner, Blaney appeared to throw a block to try to break Hocevar’s momentum. But if you know anything about Carson Hocevar, you probably know what happened next: The Hurricane refused to lift, getting into the back of Blaney and sending him into the wall and bringing an end to a great run for the #12 car.
It’s just the latest in a long string of run-ins for Hocevar, who’s made more than his fair share of enemies this season. And during an interview following the wreck, Blaney hinted that he would have something to say to the 23-year-old after the race:
And less than 50 laps later, Blaney was ready to let Hocevar know what he thought of the move.
After the race, Blaney immediately ran to Hocevar’s car on pit road. The driver of the #12 car immediately grabbed Hocevar, who then started swinging on Blaney – and from there, it was on:
Opinions on social media were divided after the altercation, with many siding with Hocevar and blaming Blaney for the wreck, while others felt (like many of the drivers do) that somebody needed to confront Hocevar for his aggressive (and at times reckless) driving.
One thing everybody seemed to agree on though was that nobody wanted to see NASCAR penalize the drivers for working things out between themselves – even if it was with their fists.
Luckily, NASCAR announced today that they won’t be issuing any penalties to Blaney or Hocevar for the incident, with CEO Steve O’Donnell speaking about the altercation on Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour podcast:
“Don’t use your car as a weapon, so to speak. … We’ve been on record, drivers need to handle their business outside of the car.
If drivers are going to handle their own business, the way we looked at that, how it played out, we’re not going to encourage fighting, but what we are going to encourage is passion, right?
And those are two guys — Blaney’s showing his passion, showing his fire. So no, there’s nothing coming from us in terms of – we’ll obviously watch what happens the rest of the way, but nothing in terms of post-race penalties.”
Of course that doesn’t mean that there won’t be penalties from the incident: NASCAR is still looking at the fight to make sure there were no crew members involved who should be penalized, because as O’Donnell pointed out, they don’t want to get into a situation where pit crew members are beating up other drivers after a race.
There was a time in the not-so-distant past when NASCAR would have penalized drivers for fighting after a race – and then turned around and used video of the fight in commercials for the sport. But leadership has been working hard at getting NASCAR back to its roots, so it’s great to see that they’re not going to penalize drivers for showing some of that blue collar passion that makes the sport great.
