Just a few short weeks after Brad Keselowski and Matt Kenseth had words at Charlotte, No. 2 found himself in the middle of a bigger, brawlier run-in with none other than Jeff Gordon last night. Like any good tussle, this one was long on emotions and short on justification, but this time, seemingly everyone on pit road was involved.
The whole altercation stemmed from contact between Keselowski and Gordon in Turn 1 after a restart. Keselowski's dive for the inside put him in Gordon's path, causing contact that cut No. 24's left-rear tire. Keselowski drove away unscathed, while Gordon wobbled, dropped several positions, and finally spun out.
Keselowski maintains that he saw a gap and shot for it, while Gordon viewed the move as an intentional shunt. On his website, Gordon said, "We drove down into Turn 1 and he just decided to body slam us and cut our left-rear tire. It ruined our night . . . It's just uncalled for."
Gordon thus took matters into his own hands, parking alongside Keselowski in the pits and storming over to have some words with the younger driver. Then, egged on by Kevin Harvick seemingly shoving Keselowski into Gordon's swatting range (watch the 0:57 mark in the video below), pit road erupts in a shoving match, with crew members from both teams getting in their own punches and jabs.
Tensions didn't cool down one bit in the post-race interviews: "You can't have a conversation with him," says Gordon—who apparently just wanted to talk things out when he parked alongside Keselowski's car and stormed past his pit crew. "He's just a dipshit," Gordon says on-camera. Keselowski didn't seem to want to de-escalate the situation, though, himself no stranger to driver altercations after being slapped with a $50,000 fine for colliding with Matt Kenseth and chasing down Denny Hamlin in the pits at Charlotte. It's impossible to see who started swinging first this time, but the results can be seen on both drivers' faces in the post-race interviews.
The on-track events put Gordon down three positions, landing him 12 points behind Joey Logano, while Keselowski stands in seventh, one point ahead of Harvick.
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from Car and Driver Blog http://ift.tt/nSHy27
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