NASCAR insiders question if fighting should be allowed to resolve disputes

Two NASCAR insiders discuss whether the governing body should allow fighting to settle disputes. On The Teardown podcast, Jordan Bianchi and Jeff Gluck of The Athletic talked about drivers fighting after Sammy Smith and Taylor Gray exchanged words following the Xfinity Series race.

“You can’t have that outside the Care Center,” Gluck said about Smith and Gray’s confrontation. “I’m okay with fighting, but you have to be careful of guys just going at it crazy. At what point do you step in? Like, when you get two punches? At what point do you step in?”

Gluck, who also agrees with Bianchi about drivers fighting, responded, “Probably after somebody’s on the ground like in hockey.” Bianchi then said that Saturday’s confrontation would have been bad if people didn’t step in.

“Last night would have gotten ugly. It would have gotten ugly if they had not kept them separated,” Bianchi said. Gluck then asked, “Isn’t that how racing has been over the years, over the decades?” Bianchi said that nobody punched Dale Earnhardt Sr. for what he did on the track during his career, so “I don’t know.”

Will NASCAR allow fighting in the future?

There hasn’t been a real NASCAR fight since Kyle Busch and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. attacked each other after last year’s All-Star race. However, after the Smith and Gray battled each other on the track, it looked as if they were going to finish the fight at the Care Center.

“I mean, it’s unfortunate. You know, I’m not very proud of that, what I did,” Smith said after the race. “It’s just, he just has no respect for me, and he was flipping me off under the red flag, swerving at my door. I moved him into (turn) one, then he still had the lead those two restarts, and going on the back straightaway, I thought to myself, what would he do in this situation, and he would have done the exact same thing. So he’s flipping me off, and that right there was the line for me to ultimately make the decision I made.”

“He said he wants to go at it,” Smith added. “I mean, we can go at it if he wants, but I think, yeah, at the end of the day, it’s probably gonna be a lot more going forward, and that’s OK with me.”