Brennan Poole learned this hard lesson during this weekend’s NASCAR Xfinity 3M 250 at Iowa Speedway. Poole was so enraged by an earlier tap from J.J. Yeley that caused him to lose control that he gave Yeley a similar tap once he was back out on track. Needless to say, Poole didn’t get to keep racing.
Poole was black-flagged after the incident and parked in the garage over his shenanigans on track. (What did he think would happen? Honest question.) Needless to say, he was still fuming mad once he got out of the car.
Poole tried to play the up-and-comer card in his comments after getting pulled from the track, stating that Yeley is one of his heroes and that racing is expensive:
He just deliberately crashed me like five laps into the race when there’s 245 laps left. There’s no sense in that. It costs us a lot of money to be out here. DC Solar is putting everything on the line to build a brand. I’m trying to make myself known in this sport so I can stay here and then one of my heroes just deliberately crashed me five laps into the race. Just doesn’t make sense.
I feel like it’s pretty common sense to know that you’ve got 245 to go, like, ‘What are you doing?’ So we fixed the car, I got back to him and we just got into it. Just part of racing. Hate it happened between me and JJ but it’s just how it goes sometimes.
I’d just like to point out here that you don’t cause unnecessary on-track carnage if you’re trying to bring a pricey car (or any car, for that matter) back in for a decent finish. Especially in NASCAR, where, erm, Poole might want to leave his helmet on after the race in case a brawl breaks out.
Yeley, on the other hand, maintains that his tap on lap 15 wasn’t intentional, stressing to NASCAR that the clip was from trying (unsuccessfully) to tuck his car in behind Poole’s.
“Obviously nothing intentional,” explained Yeley to NASCAR. “I’m not just going to wreck somebody on Lap 15. It’s just a stupid thing to do.”
Longtime NASCAR driver Yeley almost seemed more frustrated than Poole was, as he was driving for a smaller team this time and you can’t just go about wrecking anyone out who angers you on track. Yeley explained to NASCAR:
Obviously he was upset and instead of just talking to us like a man after the race, he came back out there and took a good finish away from a guy with a small team. We don’t have a lot of cars and obviously he’s got no issue unloading another bullet for next week. Very furious. Hopefully NASCAR gets a hold of him before I do.
That’s how you’re supposed to handle contact on track: talk it out afterwards, and offer apologies when needed. Not by wrecking other cars out. That’s just unnecessarily expensive, dangerous, and makes everyone—the series, other drivers, and probably even your own team—mad at you.
Yeley seems confident that Poole will understand a little better once he has his own race-ending wreck.
“For a guy like that, as a rookie, to go out there and do that thing kind of…it sucks,” Yeley said to NASCAR. “The shoe will be on the other foot before too long.”
I’m not sure what I’d be more afraid of in Poole’s case: karma, or the other drivers on track who certainly won’t play nice with him now given this sort of behavior.
Moral of the story? Don’t intentionally wreck anyone else out, even if you have your reasons.
Contact the author at stef.schrader@jalopnik.com.