Photo – Drew Hallowell/Getty Images
An on-going track feud between drivers Ryan Reed and Ryan Sieg escalated Saturday afternoon at Pocono (Pa.) Raceway when a red flag for rain halted the NASCAR XFINITY Series debut at the 2.5-mile triangle just past the halfway point.
Tension between the two drivers from last weekend’s race at Charlotte (N.C.) Motor Speedway carried over to Pocono and only deepened when the two made contact on Lap 24.
The contact sent Sieg into the turn one wall and eventually to pit road where he lost two laps for repairs.
Sieg vented his frustration to the Roush Fenway Racing driver in the garage area during the rain delay which ended with expletive words, pushing and shoving.
“(Reed) kept jabbing off with his mouth, so I figured I’d shut it up for him,” Sieg told reporters after the incident. “You can’t race the kid, he’s got a lot of money and he’s got a Roush (Fenway) car, but he can’t drive it. Just an idiot. Everywhere he goes, it seems like he always in a wreck.
“Money can’t buy skill obviously with him.”
Sieg and his crew were surrounded by a number of Roush Fenway Racing crew members as the confrontation exacerbated.
“We only had four (crew members) against 20…. Just outnumbered,” Sieg added.
Sieg admitted his harsh words toward Reed stemmed for the unknown of whether or not his RSS Racing team would be able to use the team’s primary vehicle for next Saturday’s Menards 250 presented by Valvoline race at Michigan International Speedway which was their original intention.
“It’s (damage) pretty bad,” he said. “it’s not going to make it to Michigan and that’s the Michigan car. We’re going to have to thrash to get another one ready.
“We had a really good car, but just sucks to get torn up here and in the garage and have nothing to show for it. Either he can’t see or he’s brain-dead or he can’t drive. Probably all three.”
When asked whether Sieg would attempt to smooth things over with Reed moving forward, the Tucker, Georgia native quipped,
“There’s no talking to him, he thinks he does nothing wrong. He hasn’t figured it out yet. Still young, I guess. I don’t know.”
Photo – Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images
Reed who addressed the media nearly twenty minutes later chalked up the incident as just a racing deal.
“Emotions run high obviously, it’s racing,” Reed explained. “So I look forward to talking about it in a calm, cool collected manner and working it out. Obviously, we both have to race every week and it’s not going to do us any good to get in a battle royale, but at the end of the day it’s going to take two parties to agree that we need to sit down and have a mature conversation and when that happens, it happens.”
By coincidence, the teams’ haulers were parked next to each other in the XFINITY garage.
“I think he (Sieg) was upset about racing each other hard,” Reed sounded. “I have no problem sitting down and talking about it and working through it. If he’s mad at me, I’ll listen. We can give each other room or go out there and wreck each other, but I don’t see what good that does.”
Neither Reed or Sieg would confirm or deny that punches were thrown during the altercation.
Sieg would eventually settle for 29th, while Reed ended the day in the garage in 33rd after being involved in the event’s third caution on Lap 40 in an accident with Jeremy Clements. Both drivers remain in the XFINITY Series Chase field with Reed tenth and Sieg 12th respectively.
The inaugural race was rain-shortened and won by Kyle Larson for the fourth time in 82 XFINITY Series starts.