@nascarcasm’s NASCAR Grudgedown: All the active beefs as racing returns

This grudge developed on iRacing but appears to have been resolved. If you’ll recall, these two went slam-bam on each other at Richmond Raceway, with Matt DiBenedetto, clad in a giraffe costume, getting parked. You read that correctly. That’s why it’s laughable. No grudge that involves one guy dressed as a giraffe can achieve legitimate status. It’s science.

Martin Truex Jr. and Aric Almirola were mildly unhappy with each other after Phoenix Raceway, but that was many, many weeks ago. That’s why we’re trying to remind them, so that they’ll remember they were slightly mad at each other. You’ve had plenty of time to get over it, but now we kinda want you to get back under it. We are totally forcing this, and we admit it.

Things got extremely heated between Timmy Hill and William Byron for about 34 seconds after the eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series race at Texas Motor Speedway. Hill used the bump-and-run for the win, which probably irked Byron to the point where he said, “Aw, gee whiz.” But fast-forward to Dover International Speedway, when the two raced cleaner than the shop floor at Team Penske. One of these guys is an Eagle Scout. The other celebrates wins with a glass of milk. You don’t picture them fighting. You picture them riding a tandem bike together.

This one is still aflame, and there’s no extinguishing it any time soon. The key to solving the problem is to run his sim rig through Apple TV. Why is that? Because YOU CAN NEVER FIND THE DAMN APPLE TV REMOTE BECAUSE IT’S BLACK AND THE SIZE OF A PACK OF GUM.

“I GOT BUBBA’D!” exclaimed Clint Bowyer after contact with Bubba Wallace at virtual Bristol Motor Speedway. Really, this wasn’t a feud to begin with – it was just a racin’ deal. And because it involved Bowyer, it was naturally hilarious. Plus, when your name becomes a verb, you know you’ve made it. Just ask all the guys who have been Stenhouse'd on track.

At Auto Club Speedway, Truex declared a blanket “KISS MY A**” to both Denny Hamlin and Erik Jones. At the moment, we don’t know if the situation has been neutralized, but one teammate being simultaneously mad at two other teammates is rare. Imagine walking into a competition meeting having told two-thirds of your teammates to pucker up. That’d be awkward even on Zoom.

This grudge started with Garrett Smithley making contact with Dale Earnhardt Jr. at Bristol and ended with Earnhardt jokingly telling Smithley to “eat a turd” over the driver channel. It was pretty quick. Personally if Earnhardt told that to me, I would probably put that in my Twitter bio for life.

We credit Jimmie Johnson for having the courage to air his first attempt at iRacing for everyone to see. But iRacing won every time. We finally found something at which Johnson is not exceptional. As the saying goes, “If you don’t love me at my Jimmie-on-iRacing, then you don’t deserve me at Jimmie-doing-anything-else.”

We declare this one is still “simmering” because Daniel Suarez has not exacted his revenge yet, but not for lack of trying. At Texas, he tried, and based on how the right side of his car looked, he failed rather atrociously. He missed Ty Dillon completely and walled his own car. You can’t just come back from that. You have to wait for people to forget about it, then when they least expect it, make another attempt and miss just as badly.

Alex Bowman’s cruel strategy during the Pro Invitation Series was as follows – blame the dog when something goes amiss, but take all the credit when something goes right. Finn will not soon forget being the scapegoat. He has revenge in mind. Bowman thinks Finn is just lying there on the floor. Finn is not lying there. He’s waiting.

UGGGGGH, this again. Every time Matt Kenseth returns, we exhume this feud from years ago. Folks, it’s over. Done. Canceled. Move on. No one holds grudges that long. OK, actually we’re learning through “The Last Dance” that Michael Jordan does. But other than that …

Come hell or high water, DiBenedetto refuses to ever succumb to pants. His hatred of pants is what fuels him. When he’s about to deadlift 2,000 pounds, what does he do to get in the zone mentally? He thinks of pants and how much he hates them. Be on the lookout for more no-pants pictures from DiBenedetto, who won’t stop until he receives as many complaints as this year’s J. Lo-Shakira halftime show.

We’ve been away for a while, so @nascarcasm wanted to get you back up to speed on which drivers have beef with each other, which drivers had beef but resolved it and which drivers are now beefless.