Tyler Ankrum and Ben Rhodes may not be friends, but their cars surely have a magnetic connection. At Texas, they clashed again, which sent Ankrum around in Turn 1. But the No. 18 Chevy driver isn't taking things to heart.

“Some weeks you’re gonna be racing with somebody, you’re gonna go home and you’ll be mad at them and you wanna cuss them out and, and then you get to Monday and you’re just like, it’s business, man.

“It’s business at the end of the day,” he said.

Comically, and to the awe of racing fans, earlier in the season at Darlington Raceway, a similar interaction had already sent Rhodes into the wall and cut a tire, forcing nostalgia among us viewers.

At Darlington Raceway, they both clashed, and it was Rhodes who went into the wall at the time. His right front tire was damaged and he finished last.

At Texas, from his side, Rhodes mentioned that he ran out of space. “Racing incident. I had a lot of runs on him into [turn] 1. The way you pass here is you take a run on [turn] 1, everybody does it, everybody knows it, and every time I took a run, he’d throw this block, and finally I’m in there and you know my, my right side fender is what ended up getting damaged.”

We have all seen such incidents escalate here; fortunately, it did not. Talking about escalations, how can we not mention the infamous incident between Allison and Yarborough back in 1979?

Last-lap block turns into NASCAR’s most infamous fight

At the 1979 Daytona 500, we find a completely analogous incident to how it was handled here at Texas Speedway.

On the final lap, Donnie Allison was leading while Cale Yarborough closed in with a draft. As Yarborough attempted to make a rather far-fetched slingshot pass on the backstretch, Allison threw a block.

What it led to was Yarborough refusing to lift, thereafter dipping into the infield grass, losing control, and hitting Donnie Allison. The two made contact multiple times before locking together and crashing into the wall, eliminating both from contention. Richard Petty, running far behind, inherited the win.

What followed is still used as an example of how not to handle such situations. Yarborough and Allison began to argue immediately, but as soon as Bobby Allison arrived, the situation went out of control.

They both had an intense brawl before being separated by track officials.

NASCAR fined all three drivers $6,000 and put the Allisons on probation, but the real consequence was much larger, as this was the first flag-to-flag nationally televised race.

Combined with the crash plus fight, it made front-page news, having an unfortunate silver lining of pushing NASCAR into the national spotlight.

You can read more on the Daytona Racing Digest!

Written by

Uday Jakhar

Edited by

Suyashdeep Sason