NASCAR drivers Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and Kyle Busch got into a heated exchange that led to an all-out brawl between their driving teams on live TV after the pair crashed early in a race.
Following a race on Sunday, May 19, Stenhouse confronted Busch in the NASCAR Cup Series garage over a crash during the opening lap that he blamed on his fellow driver.
Per NBC Sports, Stenhouse was driving between two cars on either side when Busch, who was driving on the outside, hit the wall. Busch hit Stenhouse's rear bumper in retaliation, which sent Stenhouse into the wall of the track, putting an early end to his participation in the 200-lap race. In a post-race interview, Stenhouse said he would confront Busch after the race.
Stenhouse accused Busch of having "wrecked" him in an intense argument that turned physical when the former punched the latter in the face. The fight, which aired live on TV, eventually got bad enough that the driver's respective teams got involved to put a stop to it. "I'm going to wreck you at Charlotte," vowed Stenhouse as the fight was stopped by everyone involved, which also included Stenhouse's father. "Bring it," replied Busch. "I suck as bad as you."
As reported by ESPN, the fight could lead to Stenhouse getting a suspension. Busch, meanwhile, is facing a potential penalty if he is found to have deliberately caused the crash that kicked off the commotion.
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"First lap of the race, we don't even have water temp in the car yet and we're wrecking each other," Busch said ahead of the face-off between him and Stenhouse. "I am tired of getting run over by everybody. But that's what everybody does: everybody runs over everybody to pass everybody." Stenhouse, meanwhile, maintained that he didn't believe him and thought it stemmed from unaddressed animosity.
“I wrecked him one time at Daytona, and he’s been kind of bad-mouthing me ever since then,” Stenhouse said after the fight, per NASCAR. “I feel like we get along with each other OK outside the race track. I talk to him quite a bit. I’m not sure why he was so mad that — I shoved it three-wide, but he hit the fence and kind of came off the wall and ran into me, and when I was talking to him, he kept saying that I wrecked him. ... Yeah, just definitely built-up frustration with how he runs his mouth all the time about myself. But I know he’s frustrated because he doesn’t run near as good as he used to, and I understand that."
Busch declined to speak with reporters after the fight.
