NASCAR News: Noah Gragson admits he wanted to punch F1 star Kevin Magnussen

NASCAR Cup Series star Noah Gragson admits he really wanted to fight F1 star Kevin Magnussen at San Diego, but feared long-term consequences for his job if he threw hands.

Magnussen made his NASCAR debut at Naval Base Coronado on Sunday, finishing in 29th position out of the 39 drivers and setting the fastest lap of the race.

That wasn't the big talking point post-race, though. After battling against each other aggressively throughout the race, which all started early on when Magnussen drove into the rear of Gragson and caused the No. 4 Ford to veer off line, the F1 star ultimately decided to intentionally wreck the full-time Cup Series regular on lap 38, causing race-ending damage to his car.

Naturally, Gragson was furious about this post-race, and he decided to confront Magnussen about it, demanding answers in what was a heated altercation.

In the end, no punches were thrown and only X-rated verbals exchanged, but Gragson says it wouldn't have been that way if it were up to him.

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Noah Gragson explains why he was mad at Kevin Magnussen

Speaking on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio this week, Gragson has revealed what made him so mad about what Magnussen did, and why he ultimately didn't come to blows with the ex-F1 man.

"What I'm most mad about is that you're in our ball field, in our ballpark, and we're out here and we race the 38 race season," explained Gragson. "To come in here on lap 3 and be jamming up the inside and running into guys and driving into their doors, not just myself but other guys, it's frustrating and you see it a lot with guys in the past.

"Maybe I'm just a magnet to it, but Sage Karam comes to mind. You get other guys who come in from the open wheel, and maybe not just open wheel, I mean some of the V8 guys, not Shane [van Gisbergen], but Will Brown, we had actually a pretty funny conversation last year after Daytona, but I think they see how much rougher and how much more contact there is [in NASCAR] than maybe some FIA forms of motorsports, where F1, they kind of have a zero touching policy.

"We do have a bit of contact, but they feel like it's 10x more than that and that's what pisses me off. You're coming into our ballpark and running into us. He hit me super hard going into turn 12, and then after I watched him do it to three other guys, it made me mad. And I raced him hard for the rest of the day, and then I was blocking him because I was over it. Sick and tired. And then he wrecked us."

Gragson: I really wanted to fight Magnussen

Such was Gragson's frustration that he admits he wanted to fight the former F1 driver and that he was ready to throw hands. Well, that was until someone stepped in with a pretty stark warning for the driver of the No. 4 Ford.

"I really, really, really, wanted to go fight," Gragson continued. "I was about to throw a punch and I got told right before I got over there that there's going to be long-term consequences with my job if that was the case, and so I had to really restrain it.

“It's a no-win situation. We're not gonna deal with that guy, probably ever again, if we do, that'll be fun, you know, I’d be excited.

“It is what it is. I move on. I'm racing again this weekend and I'm gonna just do as best of a job as I can for the #4 team.

"This season, there’s a lot of frustrations on top of that that kind of boiled over to that moment, but that was kind of the ticking time bomb and it finally went off.”