The Team Owner Whose Crew Jumped Corey Heim Is Suspended Indefinitely. NASCAR’s Fine Was $2,000, and the Anger Management Isn’t Optional.

On Monday we asked whether NASCAR would treat a pit-area brawl at a Late Model race the way it treats one in the Cup garage. On Tuesday it answered. Chad Bryant, the owner of Chad Bryant Racing, is suspended from NASCAR indefinitely, fined $2,000, barred from next year’s ValleyStar Credit Union 300 at Martinsville, placed on probation for a year and ordered to complete anger management through NASCAR’s approved program.

He has company. Crew member Steven Civatarese drew the same indefinite suspension, a $1,000 fine, the same ban from the 2027 race and a year of probation. Crew member Ryden Lapcevich was fined $500 and put on probation through Dec. 31, 2027. All three were cited under Sections 12-6.1C and 12-6.1C2 of the NASCAR Rule Book, which NASCAR’s penalty release describes as covering “member-to-member confrontation(s) with physical violence.”

What NASCAR says happened

NASCAR’s own account, published Sept. 29, is short. Corey Heim, in Nelson Motorsports’ No. 22, “led a large portion of the race before losing the lead to eventual winner Caden Kvapil,” then got into a fight for second with Treyten Lapcevich in Chad Bryant Racing’s No. 77. The two crashed in Turn 1 shortly after the checkered flag. Then, in NASCAR’s words, “multiple Chad Bryant Racing team members attacked reigning NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series champion Corey Heim in the pit area.”

As we reported, the punches landed near the track’s hot dog stand and lasted roughly 20 seconds before Henry County Sheriff’s deputies stepped in. Heim’s first response was a post on X with the video: “Solid effort, but at least make it count next time.” His second was better. He tracked down the sign from that hot dog stand and posted it as his “New office piece. Poor thing took a beating this weekend.”

The number that matters isn’t the dollar figure

Two thousand dollars is not a punishment for a man who owns a race team. It is a rounding error in a tire bill. The weight of Tuesday’s decision is in the word “indefinitely.” A fixed suspension has an end date printed on it. An indefinite one ends when NASCAR says it does, and in this case NASCAR has told Bryant what the door back looks like: finish the anger management program. Until then, he is out of NASCAR-sanctioned racing, full stop.

For scale, when a wheel came off the No. 11 Cup car at Bristol last September, NASCAR suspended two crew members for two races. A lost wheel is a safety failure that can hurt someone in the grandstands, and NASCAR still put a number on it. A team owner going after a driver got no number at all. That is the comparison the garage will read.

Why a short-track race lands in NASCAR’s rulebook

The ValleyStar Credit Union 300 is a Late Model Stock race, not a national series event, but it runs under NASCAR sanction and the people in the pits are NASCAR members. That is what puts Section 12 in play. The conduct rules that govern a Cup crew chief at Daytona govern a Late Model owner at Martinsville, and Tuesday’s release applies them without an asterisk for the level of racing.

It wasn’t the weekend’s only fight, either. After the second heat race, four more people were penalized under the same sections: Dylan Jenks and Ryan Burrow were fined $500 apiece, Brad Housewright and Chase Burrow $250 apiece, all on probation through the end of 2027. Two separate altercations at one race weekend is the kind of thing that gets a sanctioning body’s attention, and it goes some way to explaining why the Bryant penalties read the way they do.

The part NASCAR can’t decide

NASCAR’s penalties cover NASCAR. They don’t touch what happens in Henry County. As we laid out on Monday, Virginia treats simple assault and battery as a Class 1 misdemeanor, up to 12 months in jail and a $2,500 fine, and prosecutors have a year to bring a charge. Tuesday’s release says nothing about criminal charges, and a NASCAR suspension is not a substitute for one in either direction.

What the release does establish is a price list. A punch thrown at a NASCAR member, at a NASCAR race, by another member, now costs $2,000 and your membership for as long as NASCAR decides, plus a class. The open question is whether that list scares anyone who was already angry enough to swing.

Is an open-ended suspension and a $2,000 fine the right answer for a team owner who went after a driver, or should NASCAR have put a number of races on it so every crew in the pits knows exactly what a punch costs?

Sources

• NASCAR.com: Multiple penalties levied following ValleyStar Credit Union 300 at Martinsville Speedway (Sept. 29, 2026)
• NASCAR.com: Two JGR crew suspended for No. 11’s lost wheel at Bristol (Sept. 16, 2025)
• Backfire News: Rival Crew Swung at NASCAR’s Corey Heim by Virginia’s Martinsville Hot Dog Stand (Sept. 28, 2026)

Images Via: Wikimedia Commons (Nascar1996, CC BY-SA 3.0)

About the Author

Shawn Henry

Administrator

Shawn Henry has spent years writing about cars, and it shows—not in a resume kind of way, but in how he talks about them. He's the type who'll notice the weird trim option nobody remembers and actually know why it mattered. At Backfire News, he covers pretty much the whole spectrum: off-road trucks and trail builds, performance cars, racing, and the collector market. He's comfortable getting into the technical weeds, but he never forgets that most people read about cars because cars are fun, not because they want a spec sheet. His beat runs from classic and collector vehicles to overlanding culture, modified performance builds, new automotive tech, and the industry news that actually affects what ends up in your driveway. Mostly, though, Shawn thinks the best car stories are about people—the builds they pour money into, the road trips, the communities that form around a shared obsession. That's the stuff he likes writing about, and it's what you'll find in his work here.

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