Ryan Blaney knew how it looked. He admitted his confrontation with Carson Hocevar did not go as planned.
Following a dustup that ended Blaney’s race Saturday night at the Bass Pro Shops Night Race in Bristol, Tenn., the 32-year-old American walked up to Hocevar on pit row, grabbing him and yelling at him before Hocevar got in two punches.
After the two were separated, Blaney broke free and ran down Hocevar, punching him, before the two were separated for good.
“I’ll be honest, I went over there and I got my ass kicked, for sure,” Blaney said as a guest on fellow racer Denny Hamlin’s podcast “Actions Detrimental.” “I ate a two piece, and got tagged pretty good. I just wanted to show my displeasure.”
“I didn’t have a huge plan. Really, the only plan of mine was, you know, ‘I’m going to have a stern conversation with Carson,’” he went on. “I wasn’t planning on throwing anything. I just really wanted to grab him and pretty much yell at him, you know, and show my displeasure. And granted, I kind of grabbed him pretty aggressively — that, you’re probably going to defend yourself, you know? And he rightfully did.”
The tiff stemmed from a maneuver Hocevar pulled off during the race.
As 43 laps remained, he crossed behind Blaney and got inside his left side.
While heading into a turn, neither driver backed off and Hocevar made contact, spinning Blaney out of the track and into the wall to end his race.
After the race and brawl, Hocevar admitted he would “be mad at me, too.”
“Whether it was his mistake, my mistake, my fault or not, I’d be pretty pissed if I was him,” he said. “I saw him coming, and he’s moving pretty fast, and then he grabbed me, and I was like, ‘OK, I’m not going to wait.’ I’ve seen enough of these. I’m going to start swinging and see what happens.”
Blaney later confessed on the podcast that he regretted the way he acted, stating it was ” really unlike” him and he tries to “set a good example for kids” to look up to.
When approaching Hocevar, Blaney sternly grabbed him before the young 23-year-old driver pulled back and got a solid right hook punch on the side of Blaney’s head, knocking off his hat.
A second one came soon after on his cheek.
Afterwards, Hocevar gestured to the crowd, firing them up, while Blaney tumbled to the ground with members of his and Hocevar’s teams.
“He landed a pretty good right hand,” Blaney said. “It got me pretty good and the hat just kind of flung off my head. And so, when that happened I’m like, ‘I should probably return fire at this point.’ … And I see the second one coming and I’m kind of immobilized.
“And in my mind, I’m like, ‘Alright. I’m just going to eat this thing and continue to yell at him and stare at him while I just eat this other right.’ And I’ll give it to him — he tagged me in the same exact spot that he got me the first time.”
Blaney eventually got up and escaped his team to punch Hocevar.
“And so I got back up — which was the funniest part of this thing — and everyone forgot about me,” he said. “I was like, ‘I got to get back in.’ … I got back in there and kind of tackled this one guy into Carson and tried to jab a left and kind of missed. And then, really, it was over.”
The race in Bristol was the third in the postseason chase out of 10 races.
Blaney currently sits in sixth with 52 points in the standings behind NASCAR Cup series leader Kyle Larson’s total of 2,206.
Hocevar is in eighth and 85 points behind.
The fourth race on the calendar is this Sunday at Kansas Motor Speedway.
