A tough battle for sixth during the closing stages of the CARS Tour Late Model Stock race on Saturday night ended with contact between Jamey Caudill and Tommy Lemons Jr.
The dispute ultimately spilled into the garage area following the race, with both drivers exchanging words on pit road and choosing to agree to disagree.
With 20 laps to go, Caudill spun Lemons around in Turn 4 in what appeared to be a retaliatory move for contact between the two a few laps prior to the incident. Caudill accused his fellow veteran of needlessly running him up the track when they were side-by-side for position.
Caudill conceded that he had an ill-handling car but wishes Lemons had raced him differently.
“He had me passed all day,” Caudill said. “We were door-to-door on the back-straight and he turned right on me like I wasn’t even there and put me in the fence. Look, we’ve raced a long time together and he said it wasn’t intention when we talked about it but he had me beat.
“So there was no reason to run me off the race track. He knows what the deal is.”
READ MORE: CARS LMSC Recap and Results
For his part, Lemons doesn’t understand why he got spun but admitted that he wouldn’t have been in that position if he was running closer to the leaders like he expected.
“So far, we’ve been a little too slow,” Lemons said. “Tonight, we just didn’t have forward drive. Jamey? I don’t know what his problem was. He just decided he wanted to dump me for some reason.
“We’ve got to figure this car out and work on it before (the next race at Southern National) and try to get a win there.”
Lemons says he has a monkey on his back this season and plans to race at Langley next weekend to try to get it off. The 2013 Martinsville winner has not met his own expectations in 2015 and hopes the extra track time will help him sort it out.
“We’ve got these little monkeys on our back and we’re going to try to shake it.”
The notion that neither driver should have been running outside of the top-5 in the closing laps of the race is likely the one thing that both would agree on. Caudill has had fast cars for each of the first three CARS Tour races this season but has failed to match his first half speed in the closing laps of the race.
“We’ve got a problem we need to address where we’re falling off in the second half of the race,” Caudill said. “We’re losing the nose and getting tight in the center and it just runs the right rear off by the end of the race.
“We’re just struggling right now. We shouldn’t be running back there anyway.”
Lastly, Caudill says he ‘hated’ that he had the run-in with Lemons on Saturday night but said he felt justified through the entire ordeal.
“I hate that it happened with Tommy but he’s raced long enough, and I have too, and none of those deal should have happened. But both did.”