NASCAR isn't the only reason drivers reconsider fighting

In real time, upon leaving the infield care center at Darlington Raceway on Friday night, Ben Rhodes wanted to find Tyler Ankrum after the NASCAR Truck Series race to express some displeasure with some fisticuffs but quickly thought better of it.

“So, yeah, I would love to go get myself a penalty and fight right now, but that’s $75,000, so we won’t be doing that,” Rhodes said. “Yeah, won’t be doing that.”

To be fair to the facts, the fine would have been considerably less in the Truck Series compared to those in the Cup Series but the two-time champion also makes less than those who race at the highest level too.

Rhodes referenced $75,000 because that was the size of the fine issued to Ricky Stenhouse Jr. for a premeditated punch to the face of Kyle Busch following the All-Star Race at North Wilkesboro Speedway in 2024.

Watch: NASCAR issues penalties to Ricky Stenhouse Jr., No. 47 crewmembers

Anyway, the point is that drivers across all three tours keep saying things like ‘I wanted to punch him but a NASCAR fine makes it not worth it.’ It’s also poignant to mention that Stenhouse also garnered a great deal of public mainstream attention that week and created countless social media reels for NASCAR and its TV partners to use over the next several years.

NASCAR Cup Series managing director Brad Moran, somewhat, explained why the Sanctioning Body penalizes fighting during a segment on SiriusXM last week.

“If they have a confrontation … that’s one thing but we do got to watch if it gets into a true fight on pit road, I mean we’ve got concrete all around … some of the drivers are quite different in sizes,” Moran said.

“You have to be cautious [of fighting], these are professional athletes and we protect our drivers. Every situation is different, you know, the raw emotion, we really don’t want to hold all of that back.

“The drivers have the right to share their thoughts and feelings with each other and truthfully, if everybody gets to witness that, I don’t think it’s the worst thing that could happen.”

Thoughts and feelings

Austin Dillon doesn’t consider himself much of a fighter but also doesn’t buy the fine as an excuse for why he wouldn’t throw a punch either.

“Well, if you’re mad enough to want to fight, $50,000 shouldn’t stop you,” said Dillon when asked by Motorsport.com about the topic over the weekend. “I don’t know. It’s all subjective, and I don’t care to get into it. I hope I don’t have to be in that situation, truthfully. Sometimes, frustrations carry out onto the racetrack and there are certain other ways to handle things and NASCAR makes the rules so I don’t know …”

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Those other ways have been detailed by his peers and largely include air blocking or holding a rival up when they would otherwise simply let a faster car go by to preserve their own lap times.

Daniel Suarez said he wanted to fight Ross Chastain after their altercation two weeks ago at Las Vegas Motor Speedway but was discouraged by the threat of a $50,000 fine — which drew a comical response from Stenhouse himself.

“I’m not sure where Daniel got his $50,000 from but I wish that’s all it was,” Stenhouse said on Dirty Mo Media’s Gluck Cast last week. “It’s definitely in your mind, you know? For me going forward, definitely would be in the back of my mind before I pull the trigger on that again.”

What about Busch?

“Yeah, I’ve had a few skirmishes and I don’t remember the penalties of those lately,” Busch said. “The Logano thing in 2017, there were no penalties that came out of that one.”

So why did Stenhouse get such a massive number.

“That was premeditated,” Busch said with a laugh. “When you do it in the heat of the moment, you get free reign.”

That’s probably not entirely true now though.

So all of this begs the question of whether NASCAR should be policing physical altercations with massive penalties in the first place. After all, this was a discipline that received its first big jolt of mainstream attention as a result of a fight between Cale Yarborough and the Allison Brothers in the immediate aftermath of the 1979 Daytona 500.

Stenhouse addressed Moran’s rebuttal on the podcast too.

“I mean, I don’t think it’s protection,” Stenhosue said. “In my opinion, I think we all can handle ourselves up there. I mean, we drive race cars at 200 miles an hour. Safety is definitely not a concern of mine. I guess it could be used for them to as why they fine us for it, or, you know, why it’s frowned upon.

“So, you know, if they opened it up, I don’t know if you have less altercations or more, you know, because there’s definitely drivers that probably wouldn’t go confront somebody if they knew for sure that it was kind of wide open and game on. You know, so I don’t know which way it goes.”

Don’t fight for 25th

Perhaps the most nuanced answer came from Brad Keselowski on Saturday at Darlington.

“I don’t know,” said Keselowski. “You know, I go back and forth on that one (because) in some light, I love the idea of racing and being able to show the emotion and angst but then, I also think it looks really unprofessional if there’s a brawl every week, right?

“I like hockey and you know, every once and a while, they have fights and things like that, and everybody cheers for it but if every game had a fight, you just go ‘yeah.’ So I guess my personal opinion on this is like, ‘if something happens on the track and it’s in the top-5 or top-10, that seems pretty reasonable.

“If it’s for 25th, those guys should not be allowed to fight. That is a waste of time and it’s not interesting. It makes everyone looks bad.”

Keselowski reference a fight in the Truck Series in 2016 between John Wes Townley and Spencer Gallagher at Gateway. It wasn’t really a fight as much as it was a grapple on the banking.

It was, really, a kind of pitiful looking scuffle that resulted in a $15,000 fine to Townley and $12,500 for Gallagher.

“That did not look good,” Keselowski said with a laugh. “That’s not, I don’t think, what we’re going for here.”

Bubba Wallace and Kyle Larson

Bubba Wallace liked the hockey analogy and said on Saturday that fights should be man-to-man with no crew guys and should end hockey style too.

“Go to the ground, then you can stop it,” he said.

Shane Van Gisbergen said that fighting in the Australian Supercars series would get a driver banned for a year and isn’t acceptable and believes it shouldn’t be accepted in NASCAR, in his opinion, either.

“If you fought at home, you would be banned for at least a year,” said the three-time champion. “That’s not acceptable there and I don’t know that it should be here either. I honestly don’t know and I haven’t been put in that position… and hopefully it doesn’t happen to me.”

Meanwhile, other drivers with high-profile sponsors say NASCAR largely doesn’t really need to get involved because their own partners discourage them. The last physical altercation William Byron was in came back in 2016 when Stephen Nasse intentionally wrecked him in the Snowball Derby.

“Well, my reason for fighting has not been the physical side,” Byron said. “It’s been the fact that my sponsors, I think would hate it. I have sponsors that I feel like are very, you know, culture driven and I don’t want to upset them.

“So for me, it’s always been about that more than … I would love to sometimes, because I have gotten mad and wanted to go fight a fair share of times, but it’s always been in the back of my mind, that it’s not best for my team and my sponsors.”

Watch: Exclusive audio: Hear what Noah Gragson said to Ross Chastain before their fight in Kansas

Driving for Team Penske and Shell, Joey Logano echoed those sentiments.

“I don’t know if like throwing haymakers is the right way to do it every time,” Logano said. “It’s not just NASCAR, if I’m being honest. Here’s the truth: It’s not just a fine that’s stopping you, right?

“I mean, all of these guys, they are not going to care about that too much. It’s a lot, sure, but it’s more about what happens from the sponsorship side and stuff like that, which sticks with you forever.”

Logano has been involved in a handful of altercations, mostly a decade ago and longer, and he says he has to answer for those sometimes.

“It sticks with you forever, right,” Logano said. “I mean, I have lived with a lot of things I did when I was 19-years-old, and I still have to live with those decisions and I’m 35-years-old. It’s just different than it used to be, right?”

Logano says ‘everything lives on YouTube now’ and it’s harder to create distance from a fight than back in the day and that’s to say nothing of getting older and having kids.

“You think about that too, for sure, but this doesn’t mean you get walked on,” Logano said. “It doesn’t mean you can’t stick up for yourself. You definitely do that but it’s probably in ways that are not always in the public eye.”

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