NASCAR At Bristol: Matt Kenseth, Tony Stewart Unapologetic After Crash

As it turns out, some previous history between Tony Stewart and Matt Kenseth may have led to Saturday night’s crash between the two drivers while racing for the lead at Bristol.

Kenseth said Stewart was upset with him at Indianapolis because he felt Kenseth was blocking. Later, Kenseth asked for “five minutes of his time to clear the air,” but Stewart apparently refused.

“He wouldn’t give it to me,” Kenseth said. “I just got cussed out.”

At the time, Kenseth told Stewart if the drivers couldn’t resolve their problems, he’d just race Stewart exactly how Stewart raced him. So at Bristol, when Kenseth said Stewart put him in a bad position, he returned the favor.

“I was running the top lane and he got a run and he went into Turn 1 like I wasn’t there and went straight to the fence,” Kenseth said. “If I wouldn’t have lifted, then we would have wrecked. So I let him have (the spot).

“Then I got a run back, drove all the way alongside him and kept going...and he chose not to lift. So I don’t know. ... I did the exact same thing down there, except he didn’t give it to me. I guess he wanted to do all the taking.”

Naturally, Stewart disagreed.

“We were definitely faster than that after that restart,” he said. “I checked up twice to not run over him.”

Kenseth said Stewart was the best driver in the garage and the two had respectfully raced together for years without many problems. But at Sonoma, Stewart ran Kenseth off the track and cost him seven spots – Kenseth said Stewart apologized – and then there was the incident at Indy.

“If you look at it, we did the exact same thing – he just didn’t lift,” Kenseth said. “So I don’t see how that’s 100 percent my fault or my problem.”

As for Stewart’s helmet throw, Kenseth was non-plussed.

“I was expecting it,” he said.

Stewart told the Performance Racing Network he would make sure Kenseth didn’t get another chance to race him that way.

And as he told ABC: “I learned my lesson there; I’m going to run over him every him every chance I’ve got from now ‘til the end of the year. Every chance I’ve got.”