Last weekend Dale Jr. brought back the iconic Budweiser No. 8 at Florence Motor Speedway after a 17-year hiatus. The NASCAR community was left buzzing after witnessing Dale Jr. ride the right-white paint scheme at the South Carolina 400. But there was something else brewing on the track, that took the attention away from Jr.’s big day.

At several moments during the race, Dale Jr. found himself clashing with a notorious loose cannon who’s been ruffling feathers across the NASCAR community—18-year-old Truck Series rookie Conner Jones. Known for his fiery temper, Jones recently made headlines for another outburst at Florence Motor Speedway. However, Dale Jr. made it clear he wasn’t going to tolerate any nonsense on the track.

Dale Jr brake-checks Conner Jones after on-track clash at Florence

Roaring through the pack from a 37th-place starting position, Junior fought through the field and put himself in second behind eventual race-winner Treyten Lapcevich, but with 30 laps to go, a mechanical issue on the #8 car’s fuel pump held its driver back from scoring a top-5 finish. He finished 28th in Budweiser’s return to the racetrack with the #8 car at the South Carolina 400. But it was Jones who dominated the headlines,

Conner Jones isn’t doing himself any favors in the stock car racing world. The Fredericksburg, Virginia native has gained a reputation for aggressive driving and a combative attitude, stirring controversy across nearly every series he’s raced in—from ARCA to the CARS Tour and the Truck Series.

This weekend, he showed out again, in a blatant display of unnecessary aggression. Some short-track bumping-and-banging between himself and Mason Diaz set the stage for some ugly actions. With 86 laps to go, Jones door-slammed Diaz under caution. The two drivers were just behind Earnhardt Jr., who almost made his way into the top 10. But the multi-car wreck behind him drew a red flag. But it wasn’t over there.

Once their cars became stationary, both drivers got out and exchanged blows with each other. Track officials had to separate the brawling duo. As the tempers cooled, Jones could continue his race, while Diaz had to retire early because his car had suffered too much damage.

Speaking on his Download podcast, Dale Jr. described what went down. But Diaz wouldn’t be the only one losing his cool at Jones that day. As Dale Jr told his co-hosts on the most recent episode of the Download, “We were in the middle of three and four, The red #2 is on the outside of me, and he’s struggling a little bit. And so, when you see somebody struggling, everybody’s like, ‘Get by him! Get by him! Get by him! Hurry, hurry, hurry, Get by him!’ Because that guy’s going to try to fill the next hole on the bottom, and then he’ll get rooted up by some. Just this is the process, is kinda’ funny, because we’re all like a bunch of guys trying to shove into a revolving door.

Every one of us is trying to like take advantage of not only get by the guy that’s struggling but how can I also pin someone behindhim and get by a couple car right? how can I make this good for me in multiple ways? So I’m trying to get by this guy, he’s on the outside, he’s fine. I’m going to roll through. The guy behind him that we all pinned… He got impatient I think, and turned that guy a little bit, got three-wide or something… So now, I’ve got somebody on my right rear, and then #2 is to my outside, a little further up the track.” And that was exactly when Conner Jones tried to ruffle the feathers of a 50-year-old racing legend. In his own words, “Conner Jones popped me in the bumper in the middle, three and four, and slid me up a little bit… And I got tight rear-hooked by that guy in the middle. And that guy hits the #2, and the #2 wrecks…” By this point, Dale Jr was still trying to understand what had happened behind him. He asked his team, “Hey, did I just cause a wreck?”“I’m mad at Connor, so I break check Connor into (Turn) one. I wish he would have knocked his damn radiator out,” Dale Jr. added before saying that moments like this can lead to anger on the track which can result in “some pretty stupid decisions.”

Earnhardt Jr. added,

“That was the moment where I tried to break check him and knock his radiator out of his car but he was smart he saw it coming but then later he saw it coming…He didn’t hit me um yeah and so we’re running along again.” Jones’s antics have consistently drawn the ire of fans and competitors alike.

Most recently, at the Homestead Truck race on October 26, Jones intentionally wrecked fellow driver Matt Mills, sending him to the hospital after tensions between the two escalated earlier in the race. The incident led NASCAR to suspend Jones for one race, marking yet another blemish on the young driver’s burgeoning career.

 

 The 18-year Truck Series hopeful has talent, no doubt. But his antics make him a very hard-to-like individual. This will contribute to his declining popularity in the overall NASCAR picture. After the race, Mason Diaz also revealed what led to the scuffle between him and Jones.

“I was on the way of getting out, took my helmet off and everything. Looked up and he’s screaming cuss words at me. I’m not going to start saying it on camera. He got out of his car, kept running his mouth, he had his helmet on still. Tells how scared he is. I don’t know what more the kid needs. Suspended from NASCAR. The list goes on and on. Every single person is probably happy he got in a fight with someone because everybody wants to do it to him,” Diaz said.

This doesn’t seem like a promising development for Jones, especially with Dale Jr. singling him out over how things went out of control at the Florence Motor Speedway.

However, the young driver’s outburst wasn’t the only incident that drew criticism at the South Carolina 400.

FloRacing finds solace after South Carolina 400 stream fail

From the stream cutting out to audio issues and grainy graphics, everything that could go wrong did go wrong with FloRacing’s broadcast from Florence Motor Speedway. With nearly 44 Late Models on the track, one might expect the chaos to unfold during the race itself. Instead, the gremlins struck the internet, disrupting the live feed and turning this into one of the most unique events of the stock-car racing season.

At some point, the power outage hit the broadcast booth, leaving lead announcers, Eric Brennan, and Blake McCandless voiceless for a pretty minute. To counter the unnatural error, their partner James Pike took up commentary duties from atop a trailer in the infield, all by himself—a sight for the ages. In the end, FloRacing pulled off the broadcast, battling any issue that arose accordingly. But it wasn’t all Flo. As Dale Jr explained this Monday on the Download,  “Flo…is the front-end of the broadcast…But the producing, the editing, the directing – is all NASCAR Productions… Flo and NASCAR Productions worked together to bring this broadcast to you. I don’t think that they anticipated how stressed and over-stressed that system would be before the race started.”

“The track’s internet quit… and apparently Plan B was not working well,” concurred Dale Jr. “This is a facility that manages probably anywhere from 1500 to 2000 on the great night. They have what they need in terms of the Internet and all those things… I don’t think they could have prepared for what they were gonna have in terms of how much the whole system would be loaded by not only the fans that were there—if anybody was using the Wi-Fi—and all the staff, people piling up onto the internet service.”

After all, technology and its nuances are as unpredictable as any stock car race. But beyond all that, the 32nd edition of the South Carolina 400 will be one for the history books, although maybe not for Conner Jones. He could really use some anger management for his advances.