NASCAR tempers are flaring and one veteran calls out younger drivers for aggression and lack of respect
- Bumping opponents to win races has become the norm in NASCAR this season.
- The latest incident in Martinsville led to a post-race brawl.
Stop me if you have heard this one before: A Gen Xer says Millennials and Gen Zers are ruining things by being too aggressive and not showing enough respect because they never face any consequences.
That was NASCAR veteran Denny Hamlin's message to Jim Rome and "The Jim Rome Show" following the escalation of late-race incidents this season.
"The newer, younger generation that came in, it just seems like they are more aggressive," Hamlin said. "Now, more aggressive is fine, but I think it's just, you could talk about a much bigger subject here of, like, just the lack of respect that people have for each other nowadays. All you have to do is log on Twitter to find that."
Hamlin believes younger drivers are more aggressive than the previous generations because there is less fear of having to answer for their actions off the track.
"I think in the past, what happened is, you got wrecked or knocked out of the way, you'd get your front teeth knocked out," Hamlin said. "Nowadays, crew members protect their guys, and it's very corporate, very different sport than what it used to be. So these young guys feel like — and it's not always young guys, us old veterans, we make our mistakes too — but they're just more aggressive in thinking that, 'Hey, the risk is worth the reward because the reward is winning. The risk is, eh, I might get a little backlash here and there, and I might have to worry about that guy wrecking me in the future.' But people just think it's worth it nowadays."
While bumping and shoving have long been a part of NASCAR, this season, it has felt as though the action has reached an all-time high, especially on the final lap.
Earlier this season, Ross Chastain picked up his first career win during a final lap showdown that looked more like bumper cars.
The following week, 19-year-old Ty Gibbs shoved his own teammate out of the way on the final lap to win the Xfinity race in Richmond.
Gibbs was pretty nonchalant about the move after the race, admitting he hit his teammate on purpose and that he just expected payback at some point in a future race.
"I definitely deserve one back," Gibbs said. "We're racing for a win. They are hard to come by. So I had to take it .... John Hunter was a little faster. We had a great race. Good for Toyota to finish 1-2. Just got in there deep and had to bump him out of the way up the track."
A week later, Gibbs was indeed on the receiving end of a last-lap shove, leading to a brawl after the race.
The shoving and bumping have become so common that on the final lap of this week's Cup Series race in Martinsville, everybody expected Joey Logano to shove William Byron out of the way — including the announcers. Logano tried, but fortunately for Byron, Logano couldn't quite get close enough.