MARTINSVILLE, Va. The driver was fuming. What had just occurred in the Martinsville Speedway race was a "punk-ass move," the driver said before vowing retaliation.
"He will get back what he gets back when I decide to give it back," he said.
That's a typical reaction at any of NASCAR's short tracks. But at Martinsville, the tempers are taken to another level.
To wit: The driver above was Kurt Busch, who one year ago had just won the race and was still steamed at Brad Keselowski, who called Busch "one of the dumbest" drivers.
Martinsville, it seems, never fails to deliver. Not when it comes to close-quarters, door-slamming, fender-banging racing and certainly not when it comes to post-race fireworks.
Remember this? "He won't win this championship. If we don't, he won't."
That was Kevin Harvick promising revenge after the most recent Martinsville race when longtime friend Matt Kenseth had wrecked him accidentally, mind you.
How about this? "Hey, you (expletive) ripped off my rear bumper, you (expletive)! You (expletive) ran into the back of me!"
That was Greg Biffle two years ago, delivering those words after surprising Jimmie Johnson during a post-race interview by yanking his collar from behind.
Tempers have also manifested themselves during the race, like in the case of Brian Vickers vs. Matt Kenseth and Brian Vickers vs. Kasey Kahne.
And those are just some of the most recent incidents. The list goes on: Remember Carl Edwards threatening to punch teammate Matt Kenseth in 2007?
Clearly, there's something about Martinsville that makes drivers quite angry and causes them to get more frustrated than usual.
It could simply be that Martinsville is NASCAR's shortest track at 0.526 mile. If so, how to explain that Bristol Motor Speedway is only .007 mile longer, yet Martinsville has more consistent tempers and retaliation?
Ryan Newman, who once clashed with former teammate Rusty Wallace at the paperclip-shaped track, said the combination of heavy braking and a flat surface "just leads to more traffic jams."
"You don't get the jumbled-up restarts at Bristol like you do here," Newman said Friday. "It just gets frustrating when you get stuck behind somebody and you can't really pass them and you're going 5 mph slower through the center of the corner than your car is capable of."
Four-time Martinsville winner Denny Hamlin, who has largely avoided conflict here, said the altercations are a result of tight confines and nearly unavoidable contact.
There's one racing groove on the bottom and drivers often lose patience when getting hung on the outside.
"They're trying to force their way to the bottom and somebody doesn't cut them a break and ends up spinning them out," Hamlin said. "That's usually what happens here and it's probably 90% of why the wrecks happen and people are upset."
That difficulty passing and the lack of room to race often combines into a steamy cauldron of anger stew.
"When you're trying to pass someone for 20 laps or 30 laps, eventually you get frustrated and then that guy gives you the bumper or vice versa," Joey Logano said. "And then that person is mad because you just got moved out of the way, and it escalates from there."
There's a chance for even more fireworks on Sunday, because NASCAR has been stopping all the drivers on pit road this year instead of letting them drive back to the garage (to remove a horsepower-reducing tapered spacer).
That means instead of getting separated after the checkered flag, all the drivers will park right next to one another with the adrenaline from 500 tough laps still quite fresh.
If there's a confrontation, they'll likely have to deal with it themselves. Only two crew members are allowed over the wall, in part to avoid another incident ..
"What is kind of frustrating as a crew chief and a team member, everybody always thinks 'Oh Brian Vickers and Kasey Kahne (are angry with each other),'" Jimmie Johnson crew chief Chad Knaus said. "It's not just them. It's the 60 people that built that car or the 600 people that maintain those cars.
"Every time somebody takes a swipe at your race car you get a little bit madder and a little bit madder. It's not just the guys inside the race car. That is why those things happen." And to top all this off Kurt Busch is on the pole in style leading all the other Bow ties around the paper clip
taken in part from Jeff Gluck
updated by @johnny-mallonee: 12/05/16 04:04:08PM