NASCAR: Marcos Ambrose Deserves To Be Disciplined

Peter Casey-USA TODAY Sports

Saturday night following the conclusion of the Toyota Owners 400 things got even hotter off of the track for NASCAR driver Marcos Ambrose. Apparently Ambrose and fellow driver Casey Mears were not happy with one another in regards to how the final laps of the race unfolded. NASCAR cameras caught an above shot of the two having a confrontation in the garage area. During this confrontation Mears appears to shove Ambrose and Ambrose then lands one heck of a punch to the face of Mears. From that point on it appeared that the crews stepped in and the drivers were not able to come in contact on each other again.

According to a MRN Radio, NASCAR is currently investigating the situation. Robin Pemberton, NASCAR’s vice president of competition shared his thoughts on it.

"We don’t think it was anything too severe.We’ll get all the footage that we can and look at it and see what happens from there. We’ve got to take our time and do everything. Sometimes there’s things for us to look at that we don’t have available right now, so to make any kind of statement or call on it (at this point), we’d be wasting everybody’s time."

Wait. He doesn’t think that it is anything too severe? One of his drivers was caught on national TV punching another one of his drivers in the face, yet that isn’t too severe?

I agree that NASCAR does need to look into it further. Maybe there is more to the story than we know. Maybe Mears threw a punch at Ambrose that did not connect and that is why Ambrose threw the punch at Mears that did connect. At the end of the day though Ambrose needs to receive some sort of discipline. The bottom line here is that Ambrose is a professional NASCAR driver who is racing in the highest series and on the biggest stage that the sport has to offer. He needs to know that he cannot just go around punching folks in the face, whether they deserve it or not. Ultimately maybe Mears also needs to be disciplined for his role in the altercation.

Now I am not calling for a suspension or anything like that. I do understand that NASCAR is not like the NFL or MLB where a similar act would cost a player numerous games. I think that a fine (which would go to charity of course) and placing him on probation for a handful of races will be sufficient. NASCAR does indeed promote a “let them go at it” mentality but that is more or less reserved for the race track and not fist fights in the garage area.

The other major factor here is without question the TV element. If this was not caught on camera I would not feel nearly as strongly about it. If this happened minus the cameras the story would still most likely come to light. However, in that situation both drivers would be able to calm down and when asked about it they could provide generic answers about how they had an issue and they dealt with it. Of course it would be hard to explain the massive black eye that Mears is sporting but at least it wouldn’t have happened live on national TV.

In the end NASCAR needs to address this. While some fans will have no issue with it NASCAR does have a responsibility to its younger fans. Ambrose shouldn’t have the book thrown at him but some sort of discipline does need to be handed out.

Christopher Olmstead is the Editor of BeyondTheFlag.com on the FanSided Network. Follow us on Twitter @Beyond_The_Flag and “Like” us on Facebook.

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