iNSIDE SCOOP: Standing His Ground

Marcos Ambrose is fairly quiet for a NASCAR driver. He’s not Kasey Kahne or Matt Kenseth, but he’s not Michael Waltrip or Clint Bowyer either.

That said, don’t put him in a corner, question his manhood or invade his personal space if you’re not ready to deal with consequences.

There’s an old saying that goes, “if you’re going to kick a tiger in his butt, you’d better have a plan for dealing with his teeth.”

Ambrose, who was fined $25,000 for clocking Casey Mears at Richmond post-race, explained the fracas.

 “The altercation I had with Casey was quite impromptu,” he said in a press conference on Thursday. “As I was walking past the 13 car, as he’d finished the race, I was actually heading over to have a chat with David Gilliland just to say we’re all good after we got into each other a couple of times.  Some words were said and I was confused about why Casey was so annoyed at me, and I think you just see a lot of the passion that the drivers have and the commitment we have to try to win these races and try to run at the front.  That passion kind of got out of hand and got out of control pretty quick.”

You don’t say?

“ To be honest with you, once he put his hand on me and started pushing me around I was just trying to stand up for myself and my country and my family and my reputation and I threw a punch down on him to get him out of the way and let him know that I didn’t respect him not giving me my private space.  As it goes down, if I had my chance to think back about it, a wiser man would have walked away a little bit earlier and not got himself in that situation.  I don’t apologize for my actions.  I was just standing up for myself and my team and my family and letting people know that you can’t get in my private space like that and expect not to have any consequences.”

That’s pretty rational, if you ask me. I don’t know a racer around who wouldn’t get a bit chesty once another driver or crew guy grabs him (or her; Danica isn’t fond of being bundled about, either).  Mears was ticked, no question, and things got out of hand a bit.

Ambrose said he and Mears had talked, and all was well.

“We’ve spoken in-depth more than once,” he said. “ I honestly believe that we’ll enjoy having a beer with each other.  I think we have a mutual respect for each other.  I like Casey a lot.  I didn’t have any beef with him after the race, but emotions just got out of hand and we both recognized that if we had our time again it wouldn’t happen again, but now it has, you can’t take back what has happened. I’ve spoken to him and I’m not carrying anything forward.  He has to decide what he wants to do moving forward, but if we get ourselves in a pub somewhere I’d buy him a beer no problem.”

 For an Aussie, that’s pretty much the ticket right there.

Ambrose will cheerfully pay the fine, in a manner of speaking, not denying it and planning to pony up. 

“I got myself in a bad situation,” he said. “I caused an action that NASCAR needed to reprimand, so I’m happy to pay it and happy to move on.  It’s a heavy fine.  That’s the biggest fine I’ve ever received in racing and I think that NASCAR needed to do something and whatever they chose to do I’ll pay it.”

 That’s news right there. A professional athlete accepts the penalty for a personal action that crossed the line? Excuse me while I boggle. Tune into ESPN sometime. You won’t see this story on the crawl.

Ambrose, a super guy all around, even got a chance to crack a joke. 

“I think my NASCAR career may well be remembered by one of the best finishes of all-time and one of the best fights of all-time, too,” he posited. “It’s OK.  Our sport is made up of passion and everyone has their own angle.  Certainly, it’s not a great thing to explain to your kids on Sunday what you did.  I’ll take that penalty and the repercussions from my actions and pay it, and then people can do whatever they want from there.  It’s not for me to call NASCAR out on taking advantage of a situation like that.”

 Despite the rough and tumble racing he grew up in down under in the V8 Super Car Series, Ambrose said he’s never been in a post-race melee. I believe that.

“I’ve never been in this situation before, and it was for 18th,” Ambrose said. “That just shows you the passion we have in our sport that I’m able to get myself in a physical fight and draw a claret to finish 18th. That just shows you how deep the talent is and how much passion and commitment we all have to what we’re doing.”

 Team owner Richard Petty had his driver’s back.

“You’ve got to defend yourself no matter what, but if he knew he was gonna be fined $25,000 he might have let the guy take another swing at him (laughing),” The King quipped. “As you can see in the tape, he did not initiate any of that.  He was trying to get away, so I think, from that standpoint, I don’t know what their rationale is.  I’ll just have to talk to them (NASCAR) and see what they come up with.”

Petty of course grew up in a sport that, in the old days, was more swift and certain in post-race justice.

“It used to go on a little bit all the time, but they didn’t have all of the TV cameras and all that stuff, so you could go around behind a truck and do what you needed to do and there wasn’t very many people who knew about it,” he said.

Yeah, there was a fight, and yeah, several million folks got a look at it. But in the overall scheme of things, it was a solid outcome. No muss, little fuss, a shove, a haymaker and that was that. Kudos to Marcos for taking a stand, and to both drivers for leaving it in the garage area.