Ryan Blaney wanted answers. Carson Hocevar, however, wanted to give them in his own way. As the Team Penske driver marched over to Hocevar on pit road last Saturday after a highly controversial Bristol battle, within moments, the two Cup Series drivers were trading punches. Hocevar ultimately walked away from the confrontation. But that moment became one of the biggest talking points of the night. Now, reflecting on the incident, the Spire driver has revealed something rather unexpected about the man he hated last weekend.

“He’s tough. Obviously, I’ve never thrown a punch or anything. Obviously, we have a lot of respect for one another. I really respect him for the fact that he went on a podcast, and I feel like it was a racing incident, and he said he saw the same, and once everybody calms down, racers tend to laugh about it after,” Carson Hocevar told News 8.

It is a surprisingly respectful assessment considering how the night at Bristol ended. Blaney had spent much of the night race fighting for the win. He led 202 laps and had positioned himself near the front when the decisive incident unfolded. With just over 40 laps remaining, Hocevar attempted to cross Blaney over after the two battled for second.

Blaney moved to cover the inside, contact followed, and the No. 12 Ford spun into the outside wall. The damage ended his race, leaving him with a 33rd-place finish. On the other hand, Hocevar continued on to finish third.

For Blaney, the timing could hardly have been worse. He entered the race already trying to recover ground in the Chase after a difficult stretch. The crash, unfortunately, handed him his second consecutive DNF. The previous week, a brake rotor failure at Gateway had ended his race and dropped him to a 35th-place finish.

Now another race had slipped away, this time after running near the front for most of the night. The result pushed Blaney down to sixth in the Chase standings, while Kyle Larson took the lead. Hocevar, meanwhile, moved forward to eighth. That combination of circumstances helps explain why the confrontation became so heated.

Blaney had also made it clear immediately after the crash that he believed Hocevar was responsible for the on-track incident. He said the No. 77 simply kept coming left and never lifted, ultimately sending him into the wall. The frustration that had been building through the previous two weeks appeared to boil over after the race when Blaney walked toward Hocevar’s pit stall.

The Team Penske driver later offered a much more reflective account on Denny Hamlin’s Actions Detrimental podcast. Rather than portraying the confrontation as something he had planned, Blaney admitted that his reaction was unusual for him.

“There are things that I regret,” he said. “I try to set a good example for kids who are watching, who are fans, their parents who are allowing these kids to watch races and root for their driver. And I try to act a certain way to what a kid would want to look up to. And I look back on those things, and I definitely regret the way I acted.”

Yet Blaney also acknowledged what happened when he finally confronted Hocevar.

“And I’ll be honest with you. Yeah, I went over there, and I got my a** kicked for sure. I ate a two-piece and got tagged pretty good. But I just wanted to show my displeasure.”

That podcast appearance appears to be a major reason Hocevar now speaks about Blaney with a surprising level of respect. Rather than continuing to fuel the rivalry, Hocevar focused on the fact that Blaney was willing to look back at the incident and describe the on-track contact as a racing incident.

For Hocevar, that is what separates the heat of competition from what comes afterward. The two may have had a memorable clash at Bristol. But he does not appear interested in turning it into a permanent feud.

“A lot of times passion takes over for racers,” Hocevar concluded.

And despite everything that happened, the No. 77 driver believes the respect between the two remains intact. For a rivalry that began with a Chase-changing crash and ended with punches on pit road, that may be the most unexpected development of all.