NASCAR CEO Steve O’Donnell joined Kevin Harvick on his “Happy Hour” podcast today and reported that, “No penalties will be issued to Carson Hocevar or Ryan Blaney after their fight on Saturday at Bristol Motor Speedway.”
During stage three of the race, Ryan Blaney and Carson Hocevar got into an on track incident when Blaney tried to block Hocevar and Hocevar did not lift; sending Blaney spinning and out of the race. The two drivers were in a battle for second place at the time.
The disagreement continued after the race on pit road when the two drivers got into a row exchanging a few blows before they were pulled apart.
O’Donnell noted that NASCAR officials believe, “drivers need to handle their business outside of the car.”
There was a meme on Facebook that had NASCAR assessing Ryan Blaney with a $75,000 fine and a deduction of 50 driver points…which is obviously “fake news”!
O’Donnell noted, “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 [penalties]. We’ll obviously watch what happens the rest of the way, but nothing in terms of post-race penalties.”
After the confrontation, Hocevar spoke with the media saying, “I understand why he’s [Blaney’s] upset. That’s probably his championship. So I understand 100%. And I’d probably be mad at me, too. Whether it was his mistake, my mistake, my fault or not, I’d be pretty pissed if I was him.”
While Ryan Blaney and Carson Hocevar will not be assessed any penalties for the Bristol incident; NASCAR is keeping an eye on the situation and they are still assessing whether or not to incur any penalties on crew members who were involved in the incident.
Not one of the crew members for either team, Ty Gibbs threw a water bottle in the direction of the two drivers.