NASCAR CUP SERIES: NASCAR ALL-STAR RACE

May 19, 2024

Ricky Stenhouse

Pit Lane Interview

Q. The interesting thing here, he couldn't leave. Stenhouse was stuck in here. Ricky, you told me at the end of the first interview after the incident, you may have to hold my watch. You weren't joking. Was this pent-up anger from just this moment, or does it go back beforehand?

RICKY STENHOUSE JR: I feel like Kyle and I have always raced each other really hard back to the Nationwide Series when we were competing for wins week in and week out and never had any issues. I wrecked him one time at Daytona, and he's been kind of bad mouthing me ever since then.

I feel like we get along with each other okay outside the racetrack. I talk to him quite a bit. I'm not sure why he was so mad that -- I shoved it three wide, but he hit the fence and kind of came off the wall and ran into me, and when I was talking to him he kept saying that I wrecked him.

Yeah, just definitely built-up frustration with how he runs his mouth all the time about myself. But I know he's frustrated because he doesn't run near as good as he used to, and I understand that.

We're a single-car team over here. We're working really hard to go out and get better each and every weekend, and we had a really good game plan coming in. Our car was really strong Friday in practice. I was looking forward to running to the front. I think we had passed a couple cars there and I was excited for the rest of the night, and he ruined it.

Being stuck in here definitely doesn't help the frustration. If there was a tunnel, I'd have probably been home watching the end of that, but here we are.

Q. Where do you go from here?

RICKY STENHOUSE JR: We're going to go into Charlotte. Charlotte is a really good racetrack for us.

Q. What about you and Kyle?

RICKY STENHOUSE JR: I don't have anything else for him. If we want to do a charity match, I would do that, raise some money for maybe the NASCAR Foundation or something. That would be fun. Really other than that, I don't have a whole lot for him.