A fight transpired at a NASCAR event this weekend, and it’s being compared to Will Smith’s incident at the 94th Academy Awards.
On Friday (April 8), Brandon Jones bypassed Ty Gibbs during the NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Martinsville Speedway, taking home his fifth career victory. Still up for a $100,000 cash bonus, Gibbs continued on with the race when longtime rival Sam Mayer initiated heavy contact and bumped the rear of his vehicle, causing them to get tangled up with another driver. The logjam pushed Gibbs back from second to eighth place in the competition, and he angrily expressed his disappointment by striking Mayer’s car from behind at the end of the race — a move that eventually escalated into a physical fight.
The two opponents stopped on the pit road and exited their cars. Gibbs confronted Mayer, and they both engaged in a heated exchange that ended with Gibbs, who donned a black helmet, throwing blows at a helmet-less Mayer.
“I tried to talk to him and he got all in my face and at that point, we’ve got to start fighting,” Gibbs explained after the altercation. “We got put in a bad position there. The only thing I’m mad about is [Mayer] didn’t have anything. He wasn’t going to get past [third-place finisher A.J. Allmendinger] and I just got hit in the left rear.”
Both racers eventually chalked the fight up to a simple misunderstanding. “Heat of the moment type stuff,” Mayer said, per NBC Sports. “I think it’s more I was just trying to get his attention, and he took it the wrong way, and it just, he just snapped. I mean, that’s what I say just happened. Nothing anything horrible, but it’s just part of the sport.”
While Mayer and Gibbs, who are both white men, seem to have moved on from the situation, Black Twitter is traumatized by the brawl, which many notice has earned less attention and critique despite being worst than Will Smith’s Oscar slap. See some of the reactions below.