Noah Gragson and Harrison Burton scuffle after Kentucky Xfinity Series race

NASCAR has its first driver scuffle of its post-pandemic era.

Harrison Burton scrapped with Noah Gragson after the two drivers made contact on the track late in Friday night’s Xfinity Series race at Kentucky. Gragson went to pass Burton on the inside of turns 3 and 4 and slid up into Burton. Both drivers lost a lot of spots because of Gragson’s move.

Burton confronted Gragson after the race and gave him a shove following their conversation. Gragson then threw a punch and the two went to the ground out of the view of Fox’s cameras.

“I had a lot of people come up to me afterwards saying that was a long time coming, so I guess that was a popular move,” Burton told Fox after the scuffle.

Gragson didn’t offer much of an explanation of what happened either on or off the track. He was not wearing his mask during the scuffle. Earlier this week NASCAR sent teams a reminder to make sure that their employees abided by the series’ mask-wearing and social distancing protocols.

“I don’t really have a comment, I really haven’t seen everything that happened,” he said.

It’s not the first time that Gragson has lost control of his car underneath a competitor while racing for position in 2020. A similar move took out teammate Justin Allgaier at Bristol as Gragson went on to win that race.

Gragson finished seventh after forcing teammate Daniel Hemric up the track on the final lap while Burton finished 12th. Austin Cindric won the race for his second victory in two nights. He won at Kentucky on Thursday night too.

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Nick Bromberg is a writer for Yahoo Sports.

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