Sunday’s rumble on pit road at Texas Motor Speedway will go down in history for several reasons. It involved two former champions, Jeff Gordon and Brad Keselowski. It came in the midst of a late-season championship battle. It left both drivers bloodied and bruised when they appeared on TV afterward.
Going forward, Keselowski, one of the young, up-and-coming drivers in the sport, is looked upon by many as an outsider among his peers and a bad boy to those drivers’ fans. And Gordon, the one-time youthful Wonder Boy challenging the established drivers, has now cemented a reputation of being a tough guy willing to fight when he feels he’s been done wrong.
But Sunday night’s behavior is hardly new to NASCAR, where the fists have periodically flown for decades:
1989 Winston
NASCAR’s All-Star race has always been a little more rowdy that most races because there are no points to be lost through rough driving or bad behavior.
In the 1989 running of the event then known as the Winston, young Rusty Wallace knocked veteran Darrell Waltrip into the grass on the last lap and went on to collect the $250,000 winner’s paycheck.
In his post-race interview, an incensed Waltrip said: “I hope he chokes on that $250,000.”
On pit road, the two crews faced off with Waltrip’s group trying to block Wallace from entering Victory Lane. From there the fight was on. The end result, many feel, was Wallace receiving more boos and Waltrip hearing fewer as time went on.
2011 Kansas
Kyle Busch has had a way of angering opponents throughout his career, but few responded in the manner that team owner Richard Childress did after Busch bumped the Childress truck driven by Joey Coulter on the cool-down lap of a Camping World Truck Series race at Kansas Speedway in June 2011.
Witnesses told reporters that Childress took off his gold watch before punching Busch in the face. The two were separated, but Childress went at Busch again, putting him in a headlock and landing another punch. NASCAR fined Childress $150,000 and placed him on probation through the end of the year, saying his actions “were not appropriate and fell far short of the standard we expect of owners in this sport.” Busch was not penalized.
1957 Greensboro
Like many NASCAR brawls, the participants in a pit area scuffle at Greensboro, N.C., in 1957 included family members of the drivers involved. Tiny Lund, who got his nickname because he stood 6 feet 5 and weighed about 270 pounds, got in a post-race ruckus with Lee Petty and his then-young sons Maurice and Richard. Lund was getting the best of the trio before Elizabeth Petty, Lee’s wife, waded into the fray and began flailing Lund with her purse. Lund ended the fight there, reportedly saying, “If you’re going to beat the Pettys, you’ve got to beat them all.” Years later Maurice Petty denied rumors that his mom’s pocketbook had been such an effective weapon because of a pistol packed inside.
1979 Daytona
The first to be telecast live and in its entirety on network TV, the 1979 Daytona 500 hit the national television market at just the right time as a snow storm had socked in the Northeast and forced potential viewers indoors that Sunday afternoon. They wound up being treated to a good race and an epic fight afterward. Donnie Allison and Cale Yarborough were battling for the lead on the final lap when they made contact — several times — before both cars slid off the track in Turn 3. Richard Petty, running far behind the lead duo, motored by to take the victory, but Allison’s brother Bobby, angry with Yarborough over an earlier incident, stopped at the crash scene and soon the three were exchanging punches in front of a national TV audience. Many credit the fight for generating a much larger audience for NASCAR racing.
1968 Islip
Richard Petty and Bobby Allison carried on a lively feud for much of their NASCAR careers, but it was Petty’s kin that really took the battle to Allison. It reached a peak in 1968 at Islip, N.Y., when Petty, leading the race, tangled with Allison as he tried to lap him. Allison went on to win, but like Sunday’s race at Texas, the real action was in the pits afterward. Petty’s brother Maurice and cousin Dale Inman jumped Allison and attacked him. Allison initially wanted to get the police involved, but NASCAR officials convinced him otherwise. Maurice Petty, who was fined $250 by NASCAR, said in an interview several years ago that “Richard didn’t seem to want to take care of [Allison] so I did.” Inman was fined $100 and the fines were significant, given the fact that Allison earned just $1,000 for winning the race.
1961 Asheville Weaverville
One of NASCAR’s biggest melees ever involved a horde of unhappy fans at Asheville Weaverville Speedway in 1961. Not long after the start of the Western Carolina 500, the asphalt track began coming apart, sending chunks of pavements flying through windshields and creating conditions so hazardous that NASCAR’s executive director Pat Purcell told drivers during a red flag period that the race would be halted after another 50 laps. “I hope you can make it,” he told the drivers. Reports said that most NASCAR officials changed out of their uniforms and slipped out from the track, fearing the reaction of an angry crowd intent on seeing the 500 laps they paid for. When the race was called just after halfway, a rowdy bunch used a truck to block the drivers and crews from leaving the track. Eventually Pop Eargle, a giant of a man who was a crewmember for Bud Moore, waded into the mob, seized a piece of lumber being used as a weapon by a fan and popped him with it, ending the impasse. Four fans were treated for injuries and several were arrested.
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