Ryan McGeeESPN Senior Writer7 minute reading
We are approaching the last weeks of 2023 NASCAR Cup Series season, 75th anniversary campaign of the stock car series. To celebrate, every week until the end of the season, Ryan McGee presents his top five favorite things about sports.
The five most beautiful cars? Check. The five toughest drivers? We have it. Top five mustaches? There can only be one, so maybe not.
Without further ado, our 75 Favorite Things About NASCAR, celebrating 75 years of stock car racing.
Previous payments: The toughest drivers | The biggest races | Best title fights | The most beautiful cars | The worst cars | The biggest cheaters | The biggest hypotheses | The strangest racetracks | Best racetracks | The biggest scandals | The strangest announcements
Five biggest fights
Since we began our celebration of the countdown to NASCAR’s 75th anniversary, our topics have run the gamut from tough to great to weird. So it seems only natural that as we enter the final turns of this Rova journey together, we arrive at this week’s topic. The one who combines toughness, greatness, and weirdness, squeezes them together into a fist…and then uses that fist to punch a fool in the mouth.
So stick those fingers in, put on a mouthpiece, have Michael Buffer shout his ready-to-rumble thing and get up from the corners of the ring as we present our five greatest NASCAR fights of all time.
Honorable mention: 1972: Wheeler, fight in Baker’s yard
Buddy Baker was known as the Gentle Giant of NASCAR, a nickname that was the most backhanded of compliments. At 6 feet 6 inches tall and weighing 249 pounds, he was massive for a runner but a lovable man, and his character earned him a reputation as “quick but gentle.” It only got worse when the son of three-time champion Buck Baker struggled to win races, with “only” three wins by the end of 1971, his 12th season in the Cup Series.
To change this reputation, Baker’s friend and public relations representative, legendary promoter Humpy Wheeler, decided that Baker should take up boxing in the offseason. Wheeler, a Golden Gloves champion, began training with Baker in his garage. It worked, as Baker lost weight and felt his stamina increase.
Then, one day, Wheeler landed a punch that was a little too sharp on Baker’s face. The Gentle Giant became Bruce Banner became the Hulk. The drive turned into an all-out brawl that resembled Colin Firth and Hugh Grant in “Bridget Jones’s Diaries” as it spilled out of Wheeler’s garage into the driveway and eventually into his neighbor’s yard. ‘next door, who called the police to break it up.
“We ended up laughing about it,” Wheeler recalled last year. “Buddy also won a lot more races after that and ended up in the NASCAR Hall of Fame, so I take all the credit for that because I punched him in the nose.”
5. Charlotte 2014: “It’s Matt Kenseth!”
Since covering NASCAR, I’ve developed something of a knack for finding myself at ringside during very sudden and very unexpected garage brawls after the race. The best was when I was interviewing Dale Earnhardt Jr. in Richmond, and in the middle of that we both looked at the big screen as Marcos Ambrose was hitting Casey Mears, and Dale Jr. said to me : ” What is this ? They are the two nicest guys ever!”
But I was never so stunned as when we were all stationed behind Brad Keselowskithe transporter following the fall 2014 event at Charlotte Motor Speedway. Why BK? Because he had just finished the 500 mile race by cutting Denis Hamlinand also hit Matt Kenseth’s car during the cool-down lap. When Hamlin barked at Keselowski in the garage, we totally expected it. What none of us saw coming – especially Keselowski – was the notoriously meek Kenseth, appearing out of nowhere, sprinting past all of us to squeeze between two 18-wheelers, an alley where Brad had no loophole, and attack him like Fred Warner taking down a running back.
It was all captured live on television, with Allen Bestwick speaking for the entire planet when he declared, “It’s Matt Kenseth!”
4. Almost all of the 2000s: Biffle against the world
The only other time a driver essentially ran through me to chase another was after an Xfinity Series race at Bristol in 2002 when Kevin Harvick crushed me and others to move up to full WWE and jumping from the roof of a race car and landing on Greg Biffle’s head while “The Biff” gave post-race interviews.
This was just a small fraction of the feuds the former Trucks and Xfinity champion found themselves embroiled in during the first decade of this century, including a run and punch from Jay Sauter in 2011 in the middle of a race in Richmond, catching Jimmie Johnson in Martinsville in 2013 and, in the most infamous live interview of my career, a shoving match with Boris Said at Watkins Glen in 2011 during which Said, uh, told me, “It’s the scaredy-cat the least professional I have ever seen in my life. He wouldn’t even fight me like a man afterwards. So if someone texts me their address, I’ll go see them at their house on Wednesday and show them what they really need. He needs a fucking huge one, and I’m going to give it to him.”
3. Phoenix 2012: Bowyer Desert Race
We all like to think of Jeff Gordon as Mr. Mild-Mannered, the gentleman racer with the great hair and the rainbow-colored car. If you really paid attention, you know that it also ran with fire similar to the flame stickers that covered this car later in its sports modification career. See: his 2011 track fight with Jeff Burton which Texas Motor Speedway still uses in its promotional materials, his Kenseth “helmet” push in 2006 in Bristol and his 2014 pit melee with Keselowskialso in Texas.
But nothing is great his dramatic duel with Clint Bowyer in Phoenix in 2012, when Gordon believed the contact with Bowyer had ended his title hopes, so he returned the favor by hooking Bowyer later in the race. When he got out of the No. 24 Chevrolet in the garage, Bowyer’s crew was waiting, but Gordon’s crew was ready and a “West Side Story” level brawl broke out. Meanwhile, Bowyer ran down pit road and entered the garage with ESPN cameras in tow, attempting to sneak into Gordon’s transport vehicle to restart the fight.
The tension between the two drivers persisted for years, finally being put aside when they found themselves broadcast teammates at Fox Sports.
2. The post-1989 NASCAR All-Star Race dorm rush
With all due respect to these crews, the Battle Royale of team showdowns will always be what played out in Victory Lane at Charlotte Motor Speedway after the 1989 NASCAR All-Star Race.
With the white flag in sight, Darrell Waltrip led by a few feet over Rusty Wallace, whose Pontiac slid into the left rear corner of DW’s Chevrolet and sent it spinning into the infield grass. As Wallace’s team chased the car to the winner’s circle, their path was blocked by Waltrip’s crew. What followed was an endless series of shoves, punches, at least one bitten finger and one crew member nearly losing both ears when his helmet was ripped off.
The fight was eventually broken up by police, but the aftermath lasted for years. Waltrip decried that Wallace had “let greed trump speed” and instantly went from bad to good in the eyes of a tribune that had long booed him. For Wallace, it was the opposite.
“The next morning there were fans parked on the lake in their boats near my house yelling at me,” Wallace recalled. “And when my kids woke up, there were police cars in my driveway. I thought, ‘Dad had a rough day. I’ll explain it to you when you’re older.'”
1. Daytona 500 1979: “And there’s a fight!” »
You knew this had to be fight #1, right? It’s the one where, even today, all these decades later, you can still hear Ken Squier on CBS shouting, “And there’s a fight!”
The short version of this story: Cale Yarborough and Donnie Allison destroyed each other while running 1-2 on the final lap of the Great American Race, opening the door for Richard Petty to pass and take the win. When their cars came to a stop in the rain-saturated grass between Turns 3 and 4, Yarborough and Allison got out and started screaming. That’s when Bobby Allison, still angry about being eliminated early in the race, stopped to check on his brother…and ended up fighting with Cale too.
As Bobby likes to say, “Cale questioned my ancestry, then he started punching me with his face.” CBS cameras followed the fight live, the blood-red cherry on the first-ever flag-to-flag coverage of the Daytona 500, an audience of millions boosted by the fact that a snowstorm wiped out most of the race East Coast. stuck inside with nothing else to look at.
Days later, NASCAR Chairman Bill France Jr. called Yarborough and the Allisons to the table at the sanctioning body’s headquarters and slapped them with massive fines…which he never did perceived. “Damn,” Yarborough said years later, “he should have paid us extra for what we did for the sport that day.”
