NASCAR star lost respect for rival over 'chicken stuff' in post-race confrontation

Daniel Suarez has opened up further on his confrontation with former NASCAR Cup Series team-mate Ross Chastain at Las Vegas.

The pair got into it after the race, when a conversation escalated to shoves before officials got in between them as they continued to jaw at each other.

Suarez called his old Trackhouse Racing team-mate Chastain 'two-faced' in the aftermath while the No. 1 car driver refused to discuss the incident, and the Mexican driver has now spoken further on the dust-up on his YouTube channel.

The Spire Motorsports star claimed that even beyond the safety issues inherent in Chastain bumping him on the cooldown lap, it was the 'chicken stuff' that the Floridian driver said in their confrontation that he found unacceptable.

Suarez said he 'lost a lot of respect' for his former team-mate over the incident, intimating that Chastain had crossed a line in his comments.

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Suarez explains Chastain incidents on-track

Taking the incident from the start, he said: "I feel like everything kind of started on Lap 2, actually Lap 1 and a quarter. He crowded me with the No. 38 and he hit me right there. It wasn't a big deal, you know. That's a racing deal. I never even thought about anything, I never raced him hard because of that or anything. I moved on, that's racing. I'm pretty sure he didn't mean to do that, it's part of racing.

"Three laps to go when I was having this issue with the left front tire, he came and he was passing me. I was trying to race him – it's three laps to go. When he was passing me, I got loose and I crowded him. We didn't touch, he didn't hit the wall, nobody crashed, nobody lost a position. Everything was fine.

"But obviously, he was mad. Understandable, a little mad. That's fine. He gave me the finger for a lap or half-a-lap, which I think is a little bit unnecessary. But that's him, that's fine."

It was afterward that the war of words (or middle fingers) turned into deliberate contact.

Suarez explains post-race extras

"He was just super mad," continued Suarez. "He hit me on the cooldown lap, which I think is super unacceptable, because at that point, we already loose our belts and all these kind of things. Some people even open their belts completely, so that's not good. For me, the biggest thing is afterwards..."

"What happens on the race track happens on the race track," he said. "That's racing, right? Everyone is going to get into it with another driver once in a while ... that's part of it. What I was actually pretty upset and disappointed is what happened afterwards.

"I have known Ross for a long time, and I have always known that him and I were very different. We're very different kind of people. That's okay, I will always respect him. But the kind of words that he said after the race is just completely unacceptable. That's chicken stuff. That's not good.

"I lost a lot of respect for him, as a person, because that's just not good. It's not a good look for him, it's not a good look for the kind of person that he is, I think. And it was just a little bit sad, to be honest. I really wanted to – I was getting fired up to fight, but what was I going to gain? There's nothing to gain with that. He's not the kind of person I really want to fight. But yeah, just disappointed."