By Michele Rahal from Race Day on Fox Sports Radio. Heard Sunday mornings from 6-9am (eastern) on 220 FOX Sports Radio Affiliates and XM Radio Channel 142.

When you think of the old days of stock car racing, you’re drawn back to a time when if it didn’t work out on the track, the drivers worked it out with their fists. Well, those days are gone. All the rage this weekend was the shoving match between Kevin Harvick and Carl Edwards. A shoving match, not a fight, not a bench-clearing brawl. No one got put in a penalty box or lost their teeth.  The real story this weekend wasn’t even NASCAR but its stepbrother ARCA.

Going into Sunday’s season finale race at Toledo Speedway the ARCA series had all the underpinnings of an incredible battle for the championship with Scott Speed and Ricky Stenhouse, Jr. in a close battle. Not to be outdone, Penske’s new young find, Justin Algaier, and the wily veteran Frank Kimmel had a mathematical chance of taking the crown.

When the flag fell, no one could have scripted the outcome. Speed, who started third and Stenhouse, starting fourth went at it tooth and claw from the get go. Stenhouse repeatedly bashed, pushed and did everything but throw a hand grenade at Speed to pass him. Finally, on lap 27, after Dexter Bean spun relinquishing third position, Stenhouse got into the back of Speed’s Toyota and, very much like the Geico kid, ‘Put him (Speed) in the wall’.

However, unlike the commercial and straight out of the movie Days of Thunder, it didn’t end there. Speed pitted, took four tires and immediately set out on a turkey shoot, the said victim being Stenhouse. He found him after Stenhouse passed Speed, who was lying in wait. What ensued was classic stock car racing retaliation 101. Speed wasted no time in driving straight into the left fender of Stenhouse’s Ford, kept his foot on the accelerator and all but destroyed Stenhouse’s car and like a chapter straight from Sun Tsu’s ‘Art of War’ totally crushed and ended all hope of Stenhouse taking the championship from Speed.

According to Speed, “He (Stenhouse) was on my bumper and he pushed me flat out until I hit the wall,” said Speed. “And then the car was completely un-drivable; it wasn’t even close. It was so bad from hitting the wall; I couldn’t do anything with it. Stenhouse started it and he isn’t going to win this championship with that attitude. That was ridiculous; that was the most blatant thing I ever saw in my life. Honestly, it’s just ARCA; that’s just how it is.” No doubt ARCA was thrilled with that statement, ultimately parking Speed.

Stenhouse, who knew Speed couldn't care less about winning an ARCA championship, did whatever he had to do to win but did not count on the well-calculated payback.

Like every great story there are always two sides, so Stenhouse and the Roush PR machine put a spin on the incident that a Moroccan whirling dervish couldn’t top.

According to Stenhouse, “I got under the No. 2 a couple times there and let him go because he almost wrecked,” said Stenhouse, Jr. following the race.  “Then I went over the rumble strips in turns one and two and that caused them to fade so I was trying to pump them up in turn three and got into the back of the No. 2 car a little bit.  After that he came back on track and got into the left rear of the Aflac Ford Fusion sending me into the wall and ending our chance for a win and a championship.  He’s a great driver but I just don’t think he drives with his head all the time. It’s a bad situation for both teams.  I can’t thank my Aflac team enough and all the guys on the Zaxby’s team that helped get us back out there.  That was pretty cool.”

Rumble strips? Pumping the brakes? Not hardly. The only thing Stenhouse was pressing was the accelerator, probably through the floorboard shoving Speed into the wall. ARCA’s viewer-ship numbers weren’t readily available, but if anyone other than Stevie Wonder was sitting in front of their television screens, what they had to have seen was a methodical, purposeful and open act of crashing someone to win the championship. Anyone can win by crashing their opponent. That is not the reason we race. Stenhouse should have been parked. But he wasn’t so Speed took the matter into his own hands.

Scott Speed may have done more than openly retaliate against Stenhouse, after all, he’s a Sprint Cup driver as of today with the Red Bull team. What he unwittingly may have done was to send a message to everyone in the sport that he’ll race clean, if that’s what you want, but he’s all too happy to take that trip into the wall with you if you intend to race dirty.

Perhaps Sunday night Speed had flowers, a card and a bottle of Dom Perignon waiting in his hotel room courtesy of Justin Algaier but if he didn’t, he should have.

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