MADISON, Ill. — Last week, Corey Day had a conversation with William Sawalich after the pair made contact during the race at Darlington Raceway. The big takeaway from the conversation for Day?
“He told me to go f–k myself.”
After World Wide Technology Raceway, the takeaway was in the form of a wrecked race car.
In the NuWay 225 Saturday night (Sept. 12), the pair found themselves running near each other for a good majority of the race. But it wasn’t until the pair made contact in turn one on lap 133 where the gloves came off in a hurry.
Day slid up in corner entry and made contact with the No. 18. From there, the drivers behind Day caught up to his bumper, sparking him to continuously make contact with Sawalich on corner exit.
Once the pair got separated on the back straightaway, Sawalich took a swing down the racetrack in apparent retaliation for the fender-rubbing. That sent the No. 17 careening toward the inside wall after making contact with the nose of Justin Allgaier.
“Apparently not, no,” said Day on if Sawalich got the message after their conversation last week. “I don’t have anything good to say, so I’d rather not say anything at all.”
Day felt like there wasn’t much he could do to minimize the contact with Sawalich.
“I went to go pull to the bottom, but the No. 7 had me pushed up into him,” said Day.
“I couldn’t really do anything like, I had nowhere to go.”
Despite the high tensions between both drivers, neither of them had much to say about the incident.
Sawalich elected to not comment with the rest of the media after being interviewed by CW Sports.
Day was clearly frustrated at the situation but didn’t want to expend any extra breath on a conversation with him as he feels they won’t see eye to eye.
“There’s nothing I can say to him that’s gonna make him see my side of it,” said Day.
“He’s just, it’s not worth my time.”
Allgaier was the third party involved in this which will take a major hit on his championship aspirations as he lost the points lead to Sheldon Creed. The damage to the No. 7’s left front caused him to finish 13th despite running inside the top 10 for most of the night.
Allgaier was happy with the speed the team had shown the whole night but was frustrated that he was caught up in a mess that had nothing to do with him.
“It’s one thing for those two to have a problem on the racetrack,” said Allgaier. “When it starts affecting other people that are in the Chase, I, I think that’s where, that’s where it’s really difficult.”
Whether or not Saturday is the final chapter in this saga between the two remains to be seen. We don’t know where Sawalich stands on the situation, given the avoidance of the topic, but at least on Day’s end, he doesn’t seem interested in this contact continuing.
Meanwhile, any potential action by NASCAR officials on the matter won’t come for a couple of days.
“I don’t know,” said Day when asked if NASCAR should do something about the incident. “I’m not gonna speculate.”
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