Hailie Deegan Explains Her Side Of The Feud With Paul Tracy
Saturday night in Slinger, WI was a hell of a race in the SRX Series.
Marco Andretti picked up his first checkered in a while in dramatic fashion on the final few laps, but the main story from last weekend was Paul Tracy and Hailie Deegan's feud that started on the track and ended up carrying itself over into the campers after the race and of course to social media as well.
From PT's IG:
The captions on these are gold. Especially the last one. So dad. The ellipsis after each statement kills me.
That's the scene heading into the series' final race this weekend in Nashville. Deegan will be back on track with Tracy. So since I got to talk to her yesterday I had to ask for the story - or her side of it at least.
"I feel like a lot of people know Paul's history in the SRX Series" Deegan said. "It came up on the screen that he's been involved in an incident in every race so I mean it's pretty self-explanatory. I was just running my race…I'm on the inside of him every time (he) chops my nose, chops my nose, chops my nose. He did that numerous, numerous times. I was like 'he's not going to give me the inside when I'm at his door like that' so coming down to the last couple laps I was like 'I gotta go, I'm getting held up, I want a chance to get on the podium. I'm not going to just stay here (next to Tracy) and go slower because I don't want to get in a collision.
"I looked at the video and my nose was at the name on his door. Coming down to the corner, he goes down. I knew he was going to try to chop my nose again. I knew exactly what was going to happen. In my head I thought hopefully he just bounces off and doesn't wreck. If he wrecks, that's not my fault. I'm holding my line on the bottom…When you go down and chop someones nose like that it gets the person who is on the inside loose also. So when he saw me on the inside, he hits me, as soon as he hits me I straighten the wheel out because I'm trying to save it. He took that as 'Oh no she turned right into me'. You know how hard it is to turn a stock car right? Very hard because they're built to turn left."
She dove more into the fallout from Tracy heading to her camper after the race, and what will happen this weekend in Nashville. As for what to expect for that, though?
"Someone's going to have to be the bigger person. Someone's going to have to be the man in the argument and it's obviously going to have to be me."
Fireworks will be certainly be expected this weekend in the Music City even two weeks after the 4th of July.