USA TODAY International Edition
Drivers fling accusations after slap at truck series race,
The sting from a slap to a NASCAR driver’s face was still being felt one day after the incident.
“I can’t even eat a sandwich, because I can’t close my mouth properly,” veteran driver Max Papis told USA TODAY Sports on Monday, 24 hours after he was smacked by another driver’s girlfriend.
Kelly Heaphy, the girlfriend of driver Mike Skeen, confronted Papis and stunned him with a hard slap Sunday after he tangled with Skeen on the last lap of the inaugural Camping World Truck Series race in Bowmanville, Ontario.
While racing for third place, Skeen slid into Papis and knocked both trucks off the track. After Papis conducted a TV interview about the incident, Heaphy came out of nowhere and slapped the Italian on the left side of his face.
“I was standing there, and this lady, she starts yelling at me,” Papis said. “I had my mouth open a little bit, and I didn’t even see things coming. She hit me so hard with an open hand. My ear is still ringing.”
Papis kept his composure after the slap and walked away — “I never hit a lady,” he said — but Skeen later accused him of escalating the situation by coming into the team’s hauler and “grabbing Kelly aggressively.”
“I didn’t know about the slap, but that was relatively tame considering he barged ( into) our trailer later and tried to pull her down the stairs in front of a NASCAR official and several members of our team,” Skeen wrote on Facebook. “She has the bruises to prove it.”
Asked about Skeen’s claim, Papis said he went into the hauler to speak with the driver and was surprised when Heaphy came down the stairs yelling.
“She already slapped me once, and I pushed her with my left hand to the side and said, ‘ I don’t want to talk to you. I want to talk to that guy,’ ” Papis said. “If me pushing her aside gave her some bruises, I apologize for that. That’s not what I wanted to do, but I still didn’t even know who this lady was. What should I have said? ‘ Excuse me, young lady. Could you please hit me with the left hand the next time? The right one hurt.’ ”
Skeen, 26, is a sports car racer who was making his first NASCAR truck start. Papis, 43, has raced in NASCAR, Formula One and the former CART Series. He substituted for Tony Stewart at the Watkins Glen International Sprint Cup race last month.
Papis, who finished sixth, called Skeen’s last- turn bump a “chicken move” and was upset that the SharpGallaher Racing driver showed no remorse. But he wanted to discuss the incident with Skeen, not Skeen’s girlfriend.
“I don’t have to explain things to the wife or daughter of some guy,” Papis said.