Aggression at COTA reaches boiling point with Suárez, Chastain and Bowman

Multiple late-race cautions at Circuit of The Americas led to bent fenders and hurt feelings Sunday afternoon.

And by the time the smoke settled, tempers were flaring between Trackhouse Racing teammates Daniel Suárez and Ross Chastain, along with Hendrick Motorsports driver Alex Bowman.

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In double overtime, Suárez restarted as the third car on the inside lane with Bowman and Chastain behind him. The field scattered up the hill into Turn 1, and Bowman peeked to Suárez’s left side. Chastain nudged Bowman under braking, sending Bowman into Suárez, who, in turn, spun Martin Truex Jr. The contact from Suárez’s No. 99 Chevrolet to Truex’s car resulted in a flat right-front tire for Suárez, whose tire carcass then came loose and necessitated the final caution of the afternoon. Suárez was relegated to a 27th-place finish.

It was a culmination of a day’s worth of aggression throughout the field. Suárez chased Bowman’s No. 48 car to pit road after the cooldown lap, nudging Chastain out of the way to get there. Bowman and Suárez had a conversation upon exiting their cars.

WATCH: Extended highlights from Sunday’s race at COTA

“He just thought I drove in and tried to drive through him,” Bowman said of Suárez. “I had the corner made. Only reason I was inside of the 99 was to protect from the 1. Then the 1 just hammered me in the corner, dumped me, then I ran into the 99, kind of cleaned him out.”

With that information fresh on his mind, Suárez made his way to his teammate’s car for a discussion. That exchange became more heated as Chastain exited his car, telling his teammate: “Don’t be all high and mighty.”

“He (Suárez) is mad at me for being two rows back,” Chastain later told reporters. “He’s always mad at me. … I shouldn’t say that. He’s not always mad at me. He’s mad at me for a restart.”

Chastain had worked his way back to the top 10 entering that double-overtime restart after spinning in Turn 1 on a restart with nine laps to go in regulation. Chastain veered to avoid Austin Dillon’s spinning car and went wide — but wound up spun around himself off the nose of Erik Jones’ No. 43 car.

“I’m getting run into, and then I’m running into people. I got spun a couple restarts before, and he got it later,” said Chastain, who rallied to fourth. “I didn’t get mad when I got spun. I just tried to get my car to start. It was in, like, low-load protection mode, and once I got the ECU cycled, I got going, and I never thought about it again.

“I don’t understand how we can be so upset about crazy restarts that we’re doing.”

Bowman, who had his own disagreement with Chastain one week earlier at Atlanta after a bailed plan to draft together, saw plenty of reason to be displeased about the calamity of each restart.

“The problem is if you don’t peek out and (dive) bomb the guy in front of you, the guy behind you does it to you,” said Bowman, the third-place finisher.

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Chastain reiterated how strong the Next Gen vehicles are — resilient enough to take a beating and keep on driving. With points on the line, drivers appear to be more willing to make the aggressive move.

“These cars are so tough, we can run into each other,” Chastain said. “I mean, there’s just lines of cars all pushing each other on the brakes. And nobody’s going in there saying, ‘I’m gonna hit somebody,’ but it’s just, the leader has to check up, and it just magnifies itself. So, I tried being up top and going around the outside and got spun. I went on the bottom and got slammed into.”

The contact left plenty of drivers displeased, but Chastain says the shoves are just part of the show.

“Are you not entertained? Are you not entertained?” Chastain said, offering his best “Gladiator” impression. “I mean, come on. This is what we love. I don’t love it doing it, but this is, as a sport, we’re not boring.”