Austin Hill was very blunt: “I don’t know how much I’m gonna get out of it.” He was talking about having a face-to-face chat with Shane van Gisbergen. The two drivers crashed hard at Chicagoland Speedway. Team owner Richard Childress accused van Gisbergen of wrecking his car on purpose. However, van Gisbergen shared a very different story, ending his excuse with a three-word insult that only added more anger to NASCAR’s newest rivalry.

“I was shooting for the bottom, trying to get clean air,” van Gisbergen explained. “I’m so tight and he just cut my nose in front of the wall. So sorry about that. Sorry to those guys. They’re always nice people.”

Shane van Gisbergen explains his side

“I’ll talk to him. But he just grunts.”

Shane van Gisbergen couldn’t help but take one last jab. The Trackhouse Racing driver had just been involved in one of the race’s biggest flashpoints after contact with Hill on Lap 47 sent the No. 33 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet spinning hard into the outside wall, ending Hill’s afternoon.

Van Gisbergen claimed he did not crash into Hill on purpose. According to him, the incident was caused by a car that just wouldn’t turn in the direction he intended it to. Trying to get his Chevrolet aimed toward the bottom of the racetrack for clearer air, he instead found Hill creeping across his nose before the impact took both drivers’ afternoons in radically opposite directions.

But Richard Childress had a very different perspective. The famous team owner immediately accused van Gisbergen of getting revenge.

“Yep, it was just payback for California,” Childress said.

For Childress, Sunday’s encounter wasn’t a singular racing event. It was the peak of a rivalry that has grown over the last month. The first flashpoint occurred in Pocono when Hill tried to enter Turn 3 with an aggressive three-wide move beneath Josh Berry and van Gisbergen.

The three of them soon ran out of space. Shane van Gisbergen was taken out of the race as a result of the collision. One week later in San Diego, California, the tension only intensified. Hill locked up his brakes going into Turn 1 on a restart. He slid right into Connor Zilisch. This caused a massive pileup that ruined van Gisbergen’s race for the second week in a row.

Van Gisbergen lost two races because of Hill’s mistakes. Because of this, many people think that Sunday’s Chicagoland clash may have been more than a coincidence. The New Zealander didn’t hide his frustration afterward, calling Hill “the same spud” after feeling he’d been taken out yet again.

It remains to be seen if NASCAR sees that as harsh racing or retribution. But what is certain is that Hill and van Gisbergen now have a history stretching across multiple race weekends. This battle seems far from finished, with Childress calling for NASCAR to look into the matter and Shane van Gisbergen claiming the contact was unintentional before making light of Hill’s communication abilities.