The things that angry young men can do. While catering to his Cup Series’ ‘golden boy’ Kyle Larson, Rick Hendrick has another driver to attend to now. Rising NASCAR sensation Corey Day has turned heads in his recent ARCA Menards Series runs. Dubbed as Larson’s successor, Day is already showing a lot of talent. However, the young prodigy’s attitude may have gotten on the nerves of Brad Keselowski’s spotter.

Maybe the immense confidence professed by Hendrick and Jeff Gordon got to his head. The 18-year-old phenom made his ARCA and Truck Series debut this year and has a lot of energy. Maybe that energy spilled over into conflict on the track and not everybody has taken kindly to it.

Kyle Larson’s clone is wreaking havoc

Corey Day is on his first legs – and yet is already brewing a storm. He drove his first ARCA car at Salem Speedway on July 27th and clinched a 7th-place result. On the same weekend, he completed the full 405 laps of his Craftsman Truck debut at Bristol. The Pinnacle Racing Group stud got a boost from these fruitful endeavors and rolled up his sleeves to emulate Kyle Larson. He improved his ARCA finishes – clinching his very first top-five result at Kansas the past weekend. But his maneuvers were not clean.

On the final lap of the Reese’s 150, Corey Day got desperate. Seeing Andy Jankowiak as a threat to his runner-up finish, Day shoved his rear into the former’s car. Jankowiak slammed the wall and emitted smoke – ultimately, Day finished 4th and Jankowiak dropped to 7th. In a recent ‘Door, Bumper, Clear’ episode, Brad Keselowski’s spotter TJ Majors sided with the KLAS Motorsports driver.

He said, “It was pretty bad if you ask me. He said he went into Turn 1 and came up the track, and used up Andy J who passed two cars at most. They have to repair everything themselves…like, it’s hard to get to the track. They got a lot of volunteers. They don’t have a paid pit crew.”

Kyle Larson‘s clone also delivered a pretty nonchalant statement in the post-race interview. That riled up Majors even more, as he bashed Hendrick’s new star. “When you go and use somebody up, you get down in the room and say, ‘I don’t really care, I’m just here to win. Don’t take my air.’ First of all, that’s not your air – it’s your job to manage your car in the lane that you enter the corner in. If you go up the track and get in somebody’s door and carry them all the way to the fence…and just get out and say, ‘You know, I’m here to win. That’s basically it… I don’t like that attitude.”

Well, karma may have hit Day already, as his subsequent truck outing was dismal.

The tables turned soon enough

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Well, Kyle Larson’s potential successor faced the consequences of his ‘angry young man’ attitude soon enough. Soon after Corey Day clinched his first top-five result, he launched into the Kansas Truck race. He cracked the top 15 by lap 12 and gained 7 positions by the end of stage 1. Crew chief Chad Norris and the Hendrick Motorsports team supplied fresh tires – but problems set in on his second stop. Matt Mills shot up the track unexpectedly and struck Day’s car, pushing it to the wall on lap 76.

The damage was terminal and axed the Hendrick star’s day. After just completing 75 laps, Day was credited with a 32nd-place finish. After leaving the care center, Day looked confused: “I’m not real sure, I mean I just watched the video. Just kind of following the 17 [Tanner Gray] down the track there trying to grab a little air and next thing I knew I was sideways.” He added a word of appreciation for his team: “We struggled on pit stops a little bit, lost spots, but gained them right back once we got out and felt like I had a top-10 truck for sure…Thank you to HendrickCars.com and everyone at McAnally-Hilgemann Racing.”

Evidently, Kyle Larson 2.0 is already learning the consequences of his on-track aggression. Let us see if he can implement his lessons in the future.