NASCAR star says fighting fines not necessary for driver safety after Daniel Suarez comments

NASCAR star Ricky Stenhouse Jr has spoken out on the sport fining drivers for physical confrontations off-track.

Stenhouse was the last national series driver to be fined for a fight getting dinged $75,000 for punching Kyle Busch and starting a brawl at the 2024 All-Star Race.

The Hyak Motorsports driver's experience has come up again this week after Daniel Suarez admitted that the spectre of a '$50,000' fine was part of his reasoning for not fighting former team-mate Ross Chastain last Sunday.

It's unclear where Suarez pulled the $50,000 figure from, although the prevailing notion is that he simply guessed.

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Stenhouse: Safety is not a concern of mine

Stenhouse told The Athletic's Jeff Gluck that he doesn't believe the fines are necessary from a safety point of view, saying: “I mean, I don’t think it’s protection. In my opinion, I think we all can handle ourselves up there.

"I mean, we drive race cars at 200 miles an hour. Safety is definitely not a concern of mine. I guess it could be used for them to as why they fine us for it, or, you know, why it’s frowned upon.”

He added: “So, you know, if they opened it up, I don’t know if you have less altercations or more, you know, because there’s definitely drivers that probably wouldn’t go confront somebody if they knew for sure that it was kind of wide open and game on. You know, so I don’t know which way it goes.”

On the confrontation between Suarez and Chastain specifically, he added: “I’m not sure where Daniel got his $50,000 from, but I wish that’s all it was. It’s definitely in your mind, you know? For me going forward, definitely would be in the back of my mind before I pull the trigger on that again. I’m sure everybody is thinking that as well but obviously, you heard Daniel’s words.

“Watching the whole thing just from clips that I’ve seen from people posting, I’m not sure anything warranted a punch. I’m sure they had a disagreement but obviously, their history goes way back being teammates and things like that. I guess kudos to NASCAR because I think the fines are in the back of everybody’s mind.”