NASCAR teammate turmoil through the years

The tension that bubbled up between Denny Hamlin and Ty Gibbs at New Hampshire Motor Speedway isn't the first time in NASCAR history that teammates have been at odds. Ever since multicar teams became the norm, drivers under the same banner have let their competitive natures boil over when racing hard against their stablemates. Some of those intrasquad squabbles have had well-publicized tipping points; others have had a longer-simmering burn.

With internal ire top of mind in these Cup Series Playoffs, take a look back at teammate turmoil in NASCAR through the years.

Neil Bonnett/Darrell Waltrip

When legendary team owner Junior Johnson expanded to a two-car operation in 1984, there were skeptics. Prime among them was Waltrip. "I'm not an advocate of any two-car arrangements," Waltrip said at the announcement. "Never have been." Waltrip said he gave the partnership roughly a 75% chance of working, and in terms of on-track success, it did. Bonnett and Waltrip combined to win 16 races in their three years paired together, and Waltrip secured the 1985 championship during that time. Their viscosity, however, was palpable.

In '84 at the Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway, Bonnett slipped past Waltrip as the yellow and white flags were displayed together for a wild series of crashes. Bonnett was declared the winner after a brief delay after the checkers, but Waltrip cried foul and the official decision was reversed days later, handing the victory to DW. Johnson went back to a single-car team in 1987 after both drivers departed. "The more I'm around Darrell, I understand why we never got along," Bonnett told the Greensboro (N.C.) News & Record in the days after the Nashville race. "He's just as damn hard-headed as I am and wants to win as bad as I do."

Ricky Rudd/Ken Schrader

Rick Hendrick was a staunch advocate for multicar teams, with his budding operation growing from one to two to three cars in quick succession as the 1980s wound down. Rudd was a newcomer to the group in 1990, and a heated contest for the lead with teammate Ken Schrader went awry at Lap 290 of 500 that year at Martinsville Speedway.

The two squeezed together at the exit of Turn 2 and both cars careened into the inside wall, ending the days for both drivers. "It's a shame," said Rudd, who had led 85 laps. "It was so early in the race. I don't know why he was racing that hard with 200 laps to go. I don't have an answer for that." Said Schrader, who led 71 laps: "We sure didn't want to get together, especially both having to call the same boss tonight."

Dale Earnhardt/Mike Skinner

Richard Childress Racing grew to two full-time teams in 1997, with newcomer Mike Skinner lining up alongside the iconic Dale Earnhardt. The friction between the two may not have been anything overly personal. It's just that Earnhardt was already a seven-time champion by this point in his veteran career. The prevailing thought: Why tamper with that recipe for success? "I’ve got to be candid, and I can easily say this — they worked together about like oil and water," Larry McReynolds, Skinner's crew chief at RCR, said in 2015. "I think they respected each other, but they just did not work together. Dale was never a big fan of Richard adding a second team."

McReynolds, now a FOX Sports analyst, suggested that Skinner claiming the Daytona 500 pole in his first race as an RCR full-timer was a likely point of contention for Earnhardt. "He didn’t need a teammate," Skinner said in 2015. "He'd won numerous championships and numerous races and did all of that without a teammate, and that was his mindset. I guess mine would have been the same way."

Jeff Green/Kevin Harvick

Richard Childress Racing had a more pronounced flare-up in the 2003 season at Richmond Raceway. Jeff Green had worked his way from 41st starting position to fifth place after the halfway point, but a back-bumper nudge from teammate Kevin Harvick knocked Green's No. 30 Chevrolet into the Turn 2 wall and out of the race. TV cameras captured Green fiercely confronting both Todd Berrier, Harvick's crew chief, and Childress himself after his early exit.

"It's one thing to get spun out. It's another thing to get spun out by your teammate," Green told reporters. "Can't hardly swallow that. Tough to be teammates when it seems like there's only one car at RCR." The team fired Green two days later. "Our relationship was not where we had hoped it would be at this point, so we decided to make this move now," Childress said. "Jeff is a very good race car driver, but sometimes change can be good for everyone involved."

Robby Gordon/Kevin Harvick

Two incidents — both at Sonoma Raceway — pitted Gordon against Harvick under testy circumstances. Gordon came up short in the first contest, when a lap-down Harvick pestered Gordon into making a mistake, clearing the way for Tony Stewart to slip by for the win. Two years later, Gordon and Harvick were teammates at Richard Childress Racing, but their harmony wasn't flowing in wine country. NASCAR still raced back to the caution flag in those days, but a "gentlemen's agreement" among drivers generally frowned upon gaining spots before taking the yellow. That didn't stop Gordon from making a pivotal pass on teammate Harvick before the field froze under caution with 40 laps left, then charging to his second Cup Series victory.

Harvick finished third and was brief in his post-race remarks, calling it "that chicken move under yellow." Instead, he left the talking to runner-up Jeff Gordon (no relation), who was in disbelief at the tactics. "If Robby raced as fast under green as he did under caution that one time, he'd win a lot of these things," Jeff Gordon said. "That's a bunch of crap right there. Anybody who races back under caution like that ... I don't know where his mind is. He did a great job. He won the race fair and square today, except for that move right there. I don't care if they call it a gentlemen's agreement or not, what he did, especially to his teammate, is absolutely ridiculous. If he can be proud and satisfied with himself to go out there and do what he did today, and he's sitting over there in Victory Lane because he knows he passed his teammate under caution, then by all means have it."

Ryan Newman/Rusty Wallace

Rusty Wallace suggested that age difference might have been part of the reason that he had such a strained relationship with teammate Ryan Newman — 21 years his junior — during their four years together at Team Penske. The differences ran deeper than the generational gap, and their issues came to a head at Martinsville in 2004. Newman gave Wallace a double-shot of bumps after a restart with seven laps remaining, knocking his teammate wide and out of second place while Jimmie Johnson sped away to victory. Their bumping continued after the checkered flag, and Wallace confirmed months later that they'd yet to sort out the incident.

Wallace was more of an open book with his driver peers and crew chiefs, while Newman preferred to close ranks and keep his team's business private. "I don't think we need to be friends to run well," Newman said before the 2005 season, Wallace's last in the Cup Series. Team owner Roger Penske didn't mind the overlap of their competitive fire. "I like the idea that they're both feisty and that they want to win races," Penske said. "It's unfortunate we had the issue we had at Martinsville, but at the end of the day, they know what they've got to do next year, and they're professional. I don't think it's gotten out of hand."

Dale Earnhardt Jr./Michael Waltrip

A caution-filled Coca-Cola 600 was the scene of a high-profile collision among Dale Earnhardt Inc. teammates in 2005. Dale Earnhardt Jr. was mired in a slump, and some of his frustration came at the expense of teammate Michael Waltrip, who spun off the No. 8 Chevy's bumper with 155 laps to go, wrecking both of their cars and three others. "I don't know what his problem is with Michael," Tony Eury Sr., then with the No. 15 team, told the AP days later. "It'll be fixed tomorrow, I guarantee it. He acts like he's friends with him, but every time he gets near him on the track, he ends up wrecking him. DEI has enough problems. We don't need that."

Earnhardt explained his side this week on the Dale Jr. Download podcast in the wake of the Gibbs-Hamlin tiff, saying that the Waltrip disagreement stemmed from his split with Eury Sr. and Jr. that offseason. "I honestly wasn't that mad with Michael that night," Earnhardt said on DJD. "Things had been boiling and I was mad, I'll be honest ... I was mad that I wasn't smart enough to stay with Tony Sr. and Tony Jr., and that I really thought splitting up with them after 2004 was the right thing to do. So I was really mad at myself, and for some reason I thought wrecking that car, I don't know. I can't make any sense of it. It was dumb."

Carl Edwards/Matt Kenseth

A post-race punch that wasn't brought some mutual frustrations to light between the former Roush Fenway Racing teammates. At Martinsville Speedway in the fall of 2007, Edwards delivered a bump to Kenseth, who opted to pay back his teammate moments later with an even harder shot. It was the culmination of building irritation between the two; both have since admitted in podcast appearances that they were both experts at pushing each other's buttons.

Edwards took a half-hearted suggestion from crew chief Bob Osborne to sock Kenseth a little too far, and he interrupted one of Kenseth's post-race interviews to confront him as he was leaving the track. After an exchange of words, Edwards faked throwing a punch, and he later apologized for his actions. "We've got to put all of the petty little stuff aside and go out and be the best teammates we can be," Edwards said then. "Because as long as we don't, we're going to get beaten by people who do."

Jeff Gordon/Jimmie Johnson

Two dust-ups on consecutive weeks in April 2010 ruffled the competitive but usually convivial relationship between teammates. Broadside contact during an intense battle one weekend at Texas Motor Speedway was followed by an aggressive block by Johnson a week later at Talladega, a move that stalled Gordon's momentum and placed him further back in the pack, where a multicar wreck snagged his No. 24 Chevy. "The 48 is testing my patience, I can tell you that," Gordon said in post-Talladega interviews. "It takes a lot to make me mad, and I am pissed right now. When a car's going that much faster, I don't know what it is with me and him right now, but whatever."

It was enough angst that team owner Rick Hendrick stepped in as mediator. "It's amazing what happens when you get Mr. H involved," Gordon said the next week. "... It's OK to have rivalries, we understand that, and to be competitive. We are very competitive. All that's good and healthy, and that's what we talked about. He pleaded his case, and I pleaded mine, and we both said 'Yep, it's all good,' and we moved on." When the Cup Series returned to Texas, the two teams had another uneasy moment with a rare midrace pit-crew swap intended to aid the No. 48 group's championship efforts.

Kyle Busch/Denny Hamlin

The final segment of the 2010 NASCAR All-Star Race became a flashpoint between the two JGR teammates, who came together with eight laps left. Hamlin drifted up and squeezed Busch into the Turn 2 fence, and the No. 18 driver signaled his radio: "Somebody better keep me away from Denny Hamlin after this race." When Busch crashed out laps later, he parked in the garage and stomped into Hamlin's No. 11 hauler. A week later, things hadn't fully cooled off. "I don't want to be part of it," Hamlin said. "Any drama that he wants to create or anything is on him. Anything he says on the radio is on him. Each year I think Kyle's going to grow out of it, and he just doesn't. … Right now, he just doesn't have himself together."

Casey Mears/Scott Speed

The 2010 season produced yet another team rift, this time between interim teammates at Red Bull Racing in Michigan's 400-miler in June. The two drivers were hovering near 30th place and by themselves on the track when Mears, a substitute for the ailing Brian Vickers, made contact with Speed's No. 82 Toyota, sending it into a long spin in Turn 1. Speed was irate, calling Mears' credentials from larger teams into question. "Both of us were struggling but wrecking us like that -- I mean is ridiculous," Speed said. "Whenever you're at Hendrick and Richard Childress Racing and then you still don't have a ride and haven't done anything, there's no real excuses after that, but whatever." Days later, the team removed Mears from its cast of substitute drivers.

Ty Dillon/Kevin Harvick

The two drivers in question weren't technically teammates in the Craftsman Truck Series' fall meet at Martinsville Speedway in 2013. Both were under the Richard Childress Racing banner in different series, though Harvick was on his way out, heading to Stewart-Haas Racing the next season. His parting gift was a crash, a fender-bashing duel under caution and parking in Dillon's pit to send a message -- an action that prompted the No. 3 crew to throw a sledgehammer at his battered truck.

"I don’t care what they throw at me,” Harvick said. “That’s exactly the reason I’m leaving RCR because you’ve got those punk-ass kids coming up." Childress was measured in his disappointment as he left the NASCAR officials' hauler. "I’ve got too much class to say what I really want to say," Childress said. "When I say it, I’ll say it to his face.”

Kyle Busch/Carl Edwards

Joe Gibbs Racing celebrated, sort of, a 1-2 finish at Richmond Raceway in 2016 after Edwards executed a bump-and-run maneuver on his teammate on the final lap. "Just an awesome day" is how Edwards described it, but Busch dodged the issue in post-race remarks with answers such as, "My guys give me great race cars each and every week."

Like with the current JGR power struggle, Coach Joe Gibbs weighed in. "I think when something like this happens, I don’t think there’s a game plan for it," he said. "You have no real organized way of handling it. What you do is you start out and work your way through it. That’s what we'll do. So, you know, it’s a tough thing because it's certainly painful for one side. You’re on such a high with the other side. It's a tough thing. What we'll do is go to work and work our way through it."

Brad Keselowski/Joey Logano

Criticism ran high after a crash with nine laps left in the Busch Clash at Daytona in 2020, with longtime Team Penske mates at the center of it. A series of strong blocks by Logano went too far through Turns 3 and 4, sparking a multicar tangle that grabbed Keselowski's No. 2 Ford and others. Keselowski lobbed critiques Logano's way afterward, saying, "Just got wrecked for no reason. Just dumb, dumb racing. Just dumb moves being thrown out there. Guys who don't know what they're doing so they throw crazy-ass blocks. It's just ridiculous." Days later at Daytona 500 Media Day, the irritation seemed to be patched up. "That stuff happens, but hey, we’ve been friends for a long time," Logano said. "We've been able to figure things out before."

Ty Gibbs/Brandon Jones

Gibbs' march to the 2022 Xfinity Series crown was rocked by controversy in the next-to-last race of the season at Martinsville. Gibbs nudged teammate Jones' No. 19 Toyota into the Turn 1 wall on the final lap and sailed to victory, costing his teammate a berth in the Championship 4. Jones was already earmarked to leave JGR in the offseason, and he looked especially forward to making that move after their bump-up. "Me and Ty have always been kind of friends, but lost all respect today. I know a lot of guys on pit road have for him." Gibbs acknowledged his overstep: "Definitely didn’t want to clean him out, but definitely wanted to move him. So I just crossed that line a little bit too much."

Sheldon Creed/Austin Hill

The penultimate Xfinity Series race of the season went squirrelly again in 2023, with overtime proving pivotal for a pair of RCR teammates who fizzled from title contention. Hard racing between Creed and Hill opened an avenue for Justin Allgaier to win, costing both teammates a shot at victory and the championship.

"He just drives over his head," Hill said post-race. "He always has." Said Creed: "He was just mad at how I raced the 21, but the roles reverse, they don’t say anything." The two have since mended fences, with Creed having changed teams in the years since.

Ty Gibbs/Denny Hamlin

The most recent example of teammate turmoil has riled an organization that swept the Cup Series Playoffs' opening round. Hard-nosed racing between the playoff-eligible Hamlin and Gibbs eventually left the No. 54 Toyota on a wrecker's hook at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. The incident sparked a garage-wide debate on the rules of engagement for teammates on opposite sides of the playoff picture. "I think there’s a reasonable etiquette to follow, where everybody can get what they need out of it," said JGR competition director Chris Gabehart. “But at the same time, you can’t create an atmosphere where everybody just has to roll over and play nice all the time either, or you won’t hang as many banners as Joe Gibbs Racing has hung over the years."