Where’s The Beef

You may remember the classic 1980s Wendy’s commercial where a group of elderly ladies go to different fast food joints driving erratically, eventually emphatically asking “Wheeeeere’s the beef?!” before having the drive through window slammed in her face. Well, many NASCAR fans have found themselves asking that same question for decades now.

For a sport in which tempers flare on a dime and threats towards other drivers get made over the radio and before the media all the time, more often than not, the “beef” never gets a chance to “cook.”

Some of the beefs between drivers have turned into the sport’s most iconic moments. Think back to the 1979 Daytona 500 when Cale Yarborough and Donnie Allison aggressively rubbed fenders, leading to the two getting out of the car and duking it out after they came to rest on the infield grass.

At the former California Speedway back in March of 2014, Joey Logano threw a late block on Tony Stewart on a restart, leading to the iconic sound bite “I’m going to bust his *bleep*!”

At Vegas in March of 2017, Logano was party to another incident when he came up the track on the exit of turn four and clipped Kyle Busch’s left rear quarter panel, sending him around. After the race, Busch came and grabbed Joey, pinning him to the ground as the two tried to exchange blows. Busch walked away with a bloody gash on his forehead, saying “That’s the way Joey races. He is gonna get it.”

In the Fall 2014 race at Charlotte, Denny Hamlin brake checked an already angry Brad Keselowski on the cool down lap following the checkered flag, spinning him out. As they came to pit road, trying to express his frustration, Brad made another enemy when he hit Matt Kenseth, leading to the two having a fracas at Brad’s hauler.

During the cool down of the 2019 All Star Race at Charlotte, Ryan Newman spun Clint Bowyer out for an earlier incident in which Bowyer brake checked Newman in the middle of the frontstretch. When the two came to a stop on pit road after the race, Bowyer came over with his helmet still on and threw haymakers through Newman’s window. Newman was quoted afterwards that it didn’t take much of a man to come up and try to fight someone with a helmet on.

In the 2024 All Star Race at North Wilkesboro Speedway, Ricky Stenhouse Jr went three wide into turn two on the first lap and forced Kyle Busch into the outside wall. Busch retaliated the next lap and wrecked Stenhouse, forcing him to have to wait for the rest of the race due to NWS’s lack of a tunnel to exit the infield while the track is hot. Ricky sat on the raw emotion the entire time, waiting in street clothes for the end of the race at Busch’s hauler, where he threw and landed a punch at Kyle’s face, resulting in a $75,000 fine and the suspension of a couple of team members for getting involved.

One more example — in the 1989 Winston at Charlotte (yes, a lot of these have happened there. Odd coincidence..), Rusty Wallace dumped leader Darrell Waltrip coming to the white flag by coming up from the outside and right hooking his left rear bumper. Wallace went on to win while Darrell spun into the infield grass. Things got awfully physical between the two after the race, and Waltrip was quoted as saying that he would never be able to show his face in the garage area after doing something like that.

Not every beef between drivers gets settled in punches and exchanges of words. Sometimes, retaliation does happen on track. Who could forget the 2015 Fall Martinsville race where Matt Kenseth, having no hood on his car from being involved in an earlier accident, wrecked leader Joey Logano in between turns one and two. This was in calculated retaliation that built up over three weeks after Logano stole a win at Kansas by wrecking Kenseth from the lead. A week later, Joey won at Talladega while Kenseth was eliminated from the playoffs. So with nothing left to fight for, Matt seized on an opportunity that gained him a lot of fans, costing Logano a championship in the end.

But, nowadays, fisticuffs rarely happen. We did have a fistfight this past Saturday at Bristol between Ryan Blaney and Carson Hocevar — which could not have been better publicity for NASCAR. But it was the first time in two years where someone finally showed the gall to take out their frustrations and settle a difference off the track. Thus, one might say the Blaney-Hocevar scuffle is a unicorn — a rare exception rather than the new unwritten rule.

More often than not, there are threats made. But, they almost always go idly by as empty words. Why is that? Where’s the beef?!?

In part, it is due to the business side of things. NASCAR — really motorsports in general, is highly reliant upon sponsorship to be able to sustain their operations. It does not take much brainpower to realize that NASCAR is an expensive sport to be involved in. The days of small mom and pop shop single-car operations such as Spartanburg’s former Bud Moore Engineering are all but gone. Even Jeremy Clements has had to join forces with Haas Factory Team to save money on building cars and help get better equipment.

Today, just to get into the sport as an owner, you have to purchase a charter from NASCAR. The cheapest charter purchase on record was $1,250,000 back in 2017. That charter today, adjusted for inflation and the ever-increasing value of the investment, would probably be worth around $45 million on the low end (but likely closer to 50). So, if you are wealthy enough to have the money to buy a charter, congrats.

But, you also have to buy or build a shop to work out of and several car chassis — one for superspeedways, one for road courses, one for short/flat tracks, and another for the intermediate tracks. You also have to hire staff to engineer and build these cars and engines, a pit crew, and a driver. Then you have to buy tires and fuel. Add in the hauler and its driver, fuel for the rig, and your costs are just plain astronomical.

That’s where sponsorship comes in. A race team has to find several corporate sponsors that are willing to invest heavily in them if they want to be competitive. That requires developing and further cultivating/maintaining relationships with those sponsors so that they will keep investing and perhaps be willing to give even more in the future as operating costs continue to rise. That means as an owner, you have to ensure those sponsors are kept happy. You cannot have your driver — wearing their branding all over them and having their name plastered on their car, engaging in behavior that can hurt a sponsor’s brand/image.

That is not something limited to just race teams. NASCAR as a business entity itself is held to those same constraints. So they cannot have their drivers doing things that can hurt the bottom line. This is not a new concept. NASCAR has been calling teams to the hauler, issuing fines, handing out suspensions, and squashing beef to preserve its image for years. It has created an entirely different problem — drivers that seem to be void of any natural human emotion or personality. A bunch of corporate shills that give politically correct answers when something controversial happens in fear of their opinion leading to being fined, their firing, being suspended, etc.

For a sport that has discouraged beefs between drivers leading to “actions detrimental”, NASCAR has also been hypocritical about it — marketing the heck out of bad blood moments with using them in ads and on social media to promote races. One non-beef example is banning moves like Ross Chastain’s ‘Hail Melon’ at Martinsville, but continuing to use the footage in advertising every time the Cup Series has raced there since.

The most recent and perfect example is after the Southern 500 when Brad Keselowski expressed his anger towards the ever-controversial Carson Hocevar after being wrecked by him. NASCAR created a ‘whose side are you on’ thing for fans to show their support for either driver. It is also possible there was some involvement on the sanctioning body’s end as Brad’s threatening statement that Carson’s day is coming and it is coming hard fell idle this past week at Gateway when Brad had the chance to retaliate with the two racing side by side for second.

There is no denying that as fans, we want to see those rivalries, battles, retaliations, and fights happen. NASCAR’s new leadership — president Steve O’Donnell, has acknowledged as much. Back when he first took over, O’Donnell said he was ok if the drivers settled their disputes off track. He doubled down on that stance back in August, stating that he was ok with drivers throwing some punches so long as the crews do not get involved.

That is a great step, but the fact of the matter is, there have been two instances of NASCAR stepping in to stop a budding feud since O’Donnell’s initial statement of approval.

Austin Hill started a war with Shane Van Gisbergen at COTA in the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series race when he punted SVG, costing him a win. Van Gisbergen retaliated at Sonoma returning the favor and then taunting Hill during his postrace celebration after winning. At the San Diego Naval Base, the two got together once more, this time when Hill squeezed Connor Zilisch into SVG going into the first turn. The ensuing wreck ended SVG’s day and cost him another potential win, which Van Gisbergen later repaid at Chicagoland. Eventually, NASCAR called them to the Hauler ahead of the July race at Atlanta to have a one on one conversation, squashing the beef once and for all.

Carson Hocevar (because who else?) and Zane Smith also had a feud come to a head at Chicagoland. Smith decided to try and retaliate by hooking Hocevar from behind, in the end wrecking both of them out of the race. They were also both summoned to the Hauler to meet with NASCAR’s competition director Elton Sawyer, leading to an end to the feud — or at least when it comes to the on track aspect of it.

That is actually the main differentiation. O’Donnell says he is ok with beef being settled face to face by drivers postrace — even if it involves throwing haymakers. That comes with two stipulations: no crew member involvement and it must be done off the track. The two examples above both involved endangering themselves and other drivers because they were doing it on the track.

Let’s summarize all this for you. Fights are not tolerable for some sponsors. But, we need the sponsors to help keep the sport alive. Fighting is also good for publicity in a way because it gets people talking, and it gets put in the media that would otherwise not bother to mention NASCAR at all. Beef is also good for storytelling and marketing. It keeps fans engaged and is something they want to see.

Thus, what NASCAR needs here is a happy medium. O’Donnell is doing a good thing to allow drivers to settle their disputes like men. Will such things inevitably cause some sponsors to back out? Yes. But perhaps that is a good thing in the long run. If they want to back a sport where the drivers are basically robots, maybe they should look into Formula One.

NASCAR cannot afford to be afraid to lose sponsors, but they also can’t go to the extreme of making the sport boring by squeezing these drivers into a box and depriving them of all natural human emotion. The sport needs drivers with personality — polarizing villains like Carson Hocevar and Denny Hamlin. There IS a happy medium somewhere. It is on Steve O’Donnell to decide when they need to smash the beef and when it is okay to let it cook.

It is on the leadership to decide just where the line should be drawn, and I feel like so far, NASCAR under O’Donnell has done a good job of that. They are making strides towards being a sport that is for the fans. Yes, they have a ways to go, but so long as they don’t cave to the corporate pressure like the France family has been guilty of over the last couple of decades, the sport has a fun and bright future ahead.