NASCAR driver Regan Smith was extremely unhappy with Ty Dillon for making contact with the side of his car during today’s Xfinity Series Zippo 200 at Watkins Glen. So, he went over to have a polite discussion with Mr. Dillon after the ra—haha, who am I kidding? Dude started a fight.
Here’s another angle of the short-lived melee:
Dillon’s number 3 car hit the side of Smith’s number 7 car after a restart on lap 47 at Turn 1, but it wasn’t even severe enough to bring out a caution.
“I may have lost the championship today, but he sure as hell did, too,” Smith told NASCAR. “There’s zero chance the 3 car wins the championship, and I’m gonna make sure of it.”
Dillon had intended to talk with Smith after the race over the snafu, but that didn’t go as planned.
“He didn’t say much. He said he was going to wreck me, but uh, we’ll see. […] It was a mistake and my fault,” Dillon told NASCAR. Dillon added, “I was gonna go talk to him about it, but I guess he didn’t want to talk.”
Dillon finished fifth, but Smith had a much worse, caution-filled race and finished twentieth. I’d say he was a bit frustrated.
Smith not only got into it with Dillon, but he had contact with teammate Chase Elliott at the Bus Stop turn on lap 15, and later contact with Brendan Gaughan that sent him into the wall outside Turn 5.
That’s the kind of miserable race that just makes you want to break stuff, and Smith’s version of “stuff” is “probably Dillon and Gaughan.” May we recommend a punching bag instead? Those usually don’t attract heat from NASCAR, dude.
As for the winner of the race, Joey Logano was dominant from qualifying to finish. He not only nailed a record-setting pole position speed of 124.308 mph, but he followed it up with a win. Logano kept swapping the lead back and forth with teammate Brad Keselowski for most of the start of the race, but eventually received a penalty for a borked pit stop. That didn’t even stop him. He drove from seventh to first on a restart following the penalty, and held onto the lead from there.
Famed “road course ringer” Boris Said finished strong as well, right above Dillon for a fourth-place finish. He was driving the number 54 car in place of Kyle Busch, which makes sense given that Busch’s focus is making it into the Chase for the Sprint Cup in the weekend’s other NASCAR race.
Contact the author at stef.schrader@jalopnik.com.