Rivalries in NASCAR don’t always cool off once the cars are parked. At Darlington, tension between two of the sport’s top young prospects turned into a heated, profanity-filled confrontation on pit road. Hendrick Motorsports’ Corey Day and Joe Gibbs Racing’s William Sawalich have been racing each other hard and getting into it all season. After a late-race incident sent Sawalich sideways into the outside wall, whatever patience was left between them ran out.

Day didn’t hold back after getting out of his car. He went looking for Sawalich to talk things out, but instead the conversation turned into something much worse. According to Day, a direct threat to wreck him during the chase was made by the JGR driver.

Apparently, talking it out isn’t the solution anymore

Speaking to reporters afterward, Day sounded like someone who’d had enough. He admitted the two had some early-season run-ins that were partly on him, and said he’d already apologized for that. Sawalich, however, he insists, has kept racing him the same way regardless.

“Just all year long, just not giving me really respect or anything. Not that I’m gonna say I necessarily deserve the most respect he’s gonna give to everybody, but I’ve owned up and apologized for my mistakes,” Day said to journalist Tim Moore.

Corey Day pointed out that he and Sawalich are going to be racing against each other for years to come, which made the way things played out during the restart even more frustrating. Day felt he was run out of room on one of the restarts, despite being one of only five cars with Sawalich coming from the back of the field on six-lap newer tires. With nowhere to go, Day had no choice but to lift.

He admitted that he was tired of feeling like he wasn’t getting much respect from the other drivers and said he was done giving them the benefit of the doubt, vowing to race them the same way they race him.

Asked how the conversation between the two drivers ended, Day didn’t leave much to Imagination. “He told me to go f*** myself, so I think that’s where we’re at. He threatened to wreck me and said, ‘We’ll see how the rest of your chase goes.’ And yeah, I don’t doubt that he will wreck me or whatever the case is in one of these races, where it means obviously a lot to me and nothing to him. So, yeah, if that happens, I really won’t be surprised at all. But I tried to plead my case and explain to him…and he doesn’t see my side of it in the slightest, so that’s how it is.”

On the other hand, Sawalich wasn’t interested in Day’s version of events. Standing next to his damaged car, he brushed off the complaints and pointed to Day driving over his bumper as the real cause of the wreck. “Yeah, I don’t know, his argument just didn’t really make sense, but we’ll see,” Sawalich said when asked about the confrontation.

Explaining the contact that ended his night, Sawalich put the blame on Day’s timing off the corner. “Yeah, he ran me up basically almost into the wall, you know. I kind of checked him so he wouldn’t hit me into the wall and then got clear of him what I thought off of two, and then he just kind of didn’t lift through my back bumper and had me turning right. And that’s kind of why I went right towards the wall to his bumper.”

When asked about Day’s claim that Sawalich had squeezed him toward the fence earlier in the race, the #18 JGR driver didn’t have much to add, “Yeah, he said I ran him in the wall earlier in the race too. I don’t really know. So sucks.”

In Darlington, Day managed to finish second, helping him jump from seventh to fifth in the standings. But Sawalich finished the regular season in 14th, meaning he doesn’t really have much to fight for. With Day chasing a championship and Sawalich racing with nothing to lose the rest of the way, this isn’t likely to be the last time these two end up in the same conversation.

Whether Rick Hendrick, Joe Gibbs, or even NASCAR steps in to avoid further damage remains to be seen. Until then, one thing is for certain: this feud is bound to keep O’Reilly Series fans entertained.