NASCAR has no plans to penalize Carson Hocevar and Ryan Blaney for their fight Saturday night at Bristol Motor Speedway. NASCAR CEO Steve O’Donnell joined "Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour" podcast on Monday to talk about the sport and he shared NASCAR's view of the fight when it comes to penalties. "We’re not going to encourage fighting, but what we are going to encourage is passion," O’Donnell said Monday in the interview, which was scheduled prior to the events Saturday night.
"So no, there’s nothing coming from us. We’ll obviously watch what happens the rest of the way, but nothing in terms of post-race penalties." O’Donnell stressed that NASCAR prefers drivers take care of their own business off the track and that no crew members throw punches. In the Blaney-Hocevar incident, Blaney approached Hocevar after the race and put his hands on Hocevar’s uniform.
Hocevar responded with a couple of punches. "Don’t use your car as a weapon. We know the Brad Keselowski incident [in 2010] with Carl Edwards, those type of things," O’Donnell said.
"We don’t want to see that or a right hook. "We’ve been on record [that] drivers need to handle their business outside of the car. We don’t want crew members — got a lot of big guys coming out of D1 football jumping in." A NASCAR spokesman said NASCAR is still deciding whether any crew members acted in a way that warrants penalties.
One person who doesn't want penalties? Blaney. Appearing on Denny Hamlin's "Actions Detrimental" podcast (Dirty Mo Media), Blaney said on Monday that he didn't think penalties were warranted.
Blaney said he didn't intend to get in a fight with Hocevar. "I wasn't planning on throwing anything," Blaney said on the podcast. "I just really wanted to grab him and pretty much yell at him and show my displeasure.
"I look at it as if someone came up to me — and granted, I pushed him at the chest and kind of grabbed him pretty aggressively — that you're probably going to defend yourself. And he rightfully did." As far as the wreck, Blaney said it was a 50-50 deal as far as blame, but he didn't feel his move warranted leaving him with a trashed car. He said he wished he had done something different.
And he noted that he regrets his actions because he wants to act as a role model to kids. "I'll be honest with you. I went over there, and I got my ass kicked for sure," Blaney said.
"I ate a two-piece and got tagged pretty good. But I just wanted to show my displeasure." On the podcast, O’Donnell also noted the following: — The league needs to work on a situation that came up in the first stage Saturday at Bristol where Joey Logano held everyone off while using the same tire for all 125 laps of the stage: "I’d like to see some more tire wear. … Something we can work on, but then the battles throughout the field were really good and certainly a lot of drama coming to the end." — NASCAR will continue to make changes they want quickly, as the league has shown with some rule changes this year: "We’re going to move quick." — He felt the aero changes for Daytona were in the right direction and, without being specific, predicted another change for Talladega in October.
"I think there will be another tweak for Talladega." — He actually made a regular-season champion shirt for Denny Hamlin and wants to have a regular-season trophy. "I think we bring that back."
