Kyle Hammer addressed the disqualification he received on Sunday night at Macon Speedway from Summer Nationals officials.

Hammer was slated to start 15th, but before the race began he was instructed to pull into the infield and then after a conversation with Summer Nationals official Jonathan Clayton, it was announced that he was disqualified.

According to a statement given to StockCarReport.com from Summer Nationals officials, “Hammer was disqualified from the main event last night due to his involvement in an altercation with another driver in the pit area.”

Hammer spoke with StockCarReport.com about the disqualification and detailed his version of events. He shared it stemmed from an on-track battle with the young Carter Schlenk during their heat race.

“The heat race happened and we’re racing on a bullring, obviously, things happen,” Hammer said. “I slid Carter there in 3 and 4 and got a good enough run, I thought, but apparently I didn’t, got across his nose. Obviously, wasn’t too bad because he kept going and went and spun himself out the next corner. But after the race, he pulls up next to me revving his motor up and flips me off. I just waved at him and told him to keep going, like whatever, trying to blow it off.”

While tensions were definitely high on track, the real flashpoint happened while Hammer was exiting the track and attempting to return to his hauler. Hammer explained that Rusty Schlenk blocked his exit with a four-wheeler that led to them making contact.

“Well, then, I go across the scales and as I’m pulling out the gate there, which most people could see I’m sure, that there’s only way one in, one way out. You got the one opening. There’s a guy at the top there that has a sign that tells you to go and tells the other people to wait. He had it on the side for me to go so I went ahead and crossed the track and no more than I crested the top of the track and started rolling down, Rusty Schlenk on his four-wheeler jolts out in front of me sideways, blocking the entire gate,” Hammer said. “So I’ve got two options, either keep going forward and run into him or go backwards and back on the racetrack. The way he did it, it didn’t give me enough time to do anything.”

Hammer then made clear, “I didn’t gas it up like people are trying to say I did. I rolled down the hill and in to the side of him, wasn’t even enough to knock him off the four-wheeler. Didn’t flip the four-wheeler over, didn’t do anything like that. We just rolled down into the side of him.”

“I definitely hit Rusty with my car, but it wasn’t an ‘On the gas, trying to run him over.’ It was an ‘Oh [crap], there’s Rusty! Try to stop.’ Just everything happened so quick. I’d hit him, but it wasn’t a hard contact. It was at low gear, rolling 5 miles an hour at most, rolled into the side of his four-wheeler,” he reiterated.

The contact with the four-wheeler then devolved into a confrontation with Schlenk’s crew and escalated with Schlenk following Hammer to his pit stall. There was also more jawing back-and-forth between Hammer and Schlenk’s crews.

“His crew is in my window, yelling, making some name calling, which again, I get it. They’re mad. We got the transfer spot. They didn’t. They gotta run a B-Main. I would be upset too. I 100% get that. But when they’re standing there flipping me off, I waited ’til they’re done and they got to do their yelling, whatever they want to do, and pulled away.”

“So I go to pull away and, at this point, Rusty is continuously following right next to my passenger side,” he relayed. “I had people say he was yelling at me, but again, I don’t know that for sure. I had the motor running. I couldn’t hear him over the motor and he was kind of to the side there where I couldn’t even see him. Anyway, we get to the gate and I turn to the right to go around, I think it was Luke Morey sitting there. I go around him and through the gate and I felt contact, again, at the right side of my car. Assumed it was Rusty, wasn’t 100% sure there ’cause, again, he’s far enough past me at that point I can’t even see him. Come to find out, it was Rusty, and I’m getting accused of running into him a second, which 100% is  not the case. I was driving back to my pit area.”

“By the time I get stopped, I had one crew guy over there back me into my pit stall. And [the Schlenks are] close enough. They’re within a 100 yards of us. So we could see each other all night long. My crew was walking by and getting yelled at the entire time by their crew. By the time it’s all said and done, I’d yelled at my crew and told them to leave it alone. ‘It’s over with. Drop it. Let it be.’ So then the entire time after that they are standing there, staring us down. Doing whatever they’re doing, trying to intimidate us, whatever. I move on with my day. I go ahead and we fix up our quarter panel damage and get the adjustments changed for the feature.”

While Hammer thought he could just move on and focus on the feature, he discovered that would not be the case as he was summoned to the DIRTcar hauler to discuss the incidents with the Schlenks and found out that the police might get involved.

“I roll up to the track to look at it and see what’s going on. And I get a phone call that Sam Driggers wants me in the DIRTcar trailer. So I walked down to the DIRTcar trailer, and apparently, Rusty had called the police saying that I had tried running him over with my race car while he was on his 4 Wheel, which like I said, he blocked the opening with his four-wheeler when I’m pulling off a one-way road, and he pulls sideways in front of a moving race car. I don’t know, I guess I learned at a young age you don’t pull out in front of a moving race car at a race track, but what do I know? So that all happens, and Sam says that he’s trying to get the police involved. Then he says that they’re thinking about not letting me race because at some point one of my crew members yelled at Carter or something happened. Like I said, I was driving back to my pit area. So I don’t know what’s going on behind me. At that point, it had nothing to do with me.”

However, he shared that was informed he would be allowed to race, “So then I asked him, I said, ‘So am I allowed to race?’ He goes, ‘Yeah, at this time you’re allowed to race.’ Okay. I said, ‘What happens if something happens on the race track with Rusty and he tries to wreck me in return for this?’ He says, ‘He has to make the show first.’ He wasn’t even in the show, he had to run a B-Main or something.”

The confrontation between the two did not stop there. The two would encounter each other in the grandstands as well.

“So then I go back up to watch the races and there’s not a very wide walkway there. Rusty’s walking to me, I’m walking towards him. Again, just trying to walk by the grandstands. He’s trying to get out. I’m trying to get in. And he stands 3/4 of the way over. It’s wide enough for two people to walk by, and he kind of takes 3/4 of it, trying to block the thing. So we bump shoulders on the way through. Again, at this point, I’m over it. I don’t want anything to do with it. It’s no big deal. It’s a racing deal. They’re pissed. Whatever.”

“Well, as soon as that happens, he runs down to the DIRTcar trailer again, saying that I’m shoving him, trying to start fights, and everything else,” Hammer said. “There’s multiple drivers that had witnessed all of it and multiple of them even stood on my side, but by the time they were on my side it was too late because we didn’t know we were getting disqualified for it until during the race, obviously.”

“So then I pulled in … they said I was disqualified. I pulled in and asked [DIRTcar official] Jonathan [Clayton] what had happened. He told me I was disqualified for something that happened in the upper pit area, which he didn’t know what was going on anyway because he down in the infield. He was doing all the tech so he didn’t really get to even be part of any of that stuff. And my only comment to him was if I’m going to get disqualified for my crew engaging in a fight that their crew started-. I’m good with my disqualification, but I feel they should have been disqualified too. if you’re going to get me in trouble for my crew’s altercation, but their crew is the one that started it, which they can say it wasn’t a crew member, but it wasn’t Rusty racing. It was Rusty’s son, and he did all this with his four-wheeler. So that, in my terms, is Carter Schlenk’s crew. To my eyes anyway.”

Hammer went on to express his opinion that the whole situation should have been avoided and it could have been if Rusty Schlenk allowed his son to deal with the situation himself rather than trying to insert himself into it.

“I don’t feel like there’s a place in the sport-. If you’re going to be a 14 or 15 year-old driver, you need to act like you’re an adult. Not saying fight, but if you’re going to be on the racetrack with adults, you need to be able to handle it in the pit area as an adult with that other driver. And not send dad or mom or another crew guy.”

“I was in the same situation,” he continued. “I was racing late models at 14 and 15-years-old also and anytime there was something happened, if I was to blame for it, dad stepped out of the way and those guys got to come over and have an adult conversation with me. They told me I was an idiot, or I sucked, or whatever happened. I had to take it on the chin like a man and move on about it.”

“But it just seems like nowadays we get this where everybody’s got to protect their little boy instead of letting them own up to their mistakes,” Hammer added. “Again, Carter never made a mistake. But me and Carter’s incident on the racetrack should have been handled with me and Carter. Rusty shouldn’t have ever stepped in unless there was a physical altercation between me and Carter, which there wouldn’t have been. I’m smart enough. Obviously, if you put your hands on a 14 or 15 year-old kid, you’re gonna have a pretty good lawyer bill by the end of that one. … We need to get the crews out of our problem solving agendas in this racing world.”

Hammer concluded, “Biggest things are, for me, there’s no hard feelings and nothing to be said with Carter. Now, me and Rusty will have other words, I guess, with the whole name calling and stuff like that, but I have nothing against Carter. I think he’s going to be a good driver one day. Just need to figure out how to get the family out of the instance and let him handle his own situations.”

Finally, Hammer shared he does not expect any further disciplinary action from the series. Additionally, he does not plan to race with them again this year as the series heads to Ohio and Michigan, long hauls from his home base in Illinois. He does plan to compete at Fairbury this upcoming weekend for the $5,012 to-win FALS Cup Special and Richard Craven Memorial. Also on his calendar is the FloRacing Night in America Series race at Lincoln on July 21st.

NEXT: Luke Morey Clarifies His Herald & Review 100 Podium Comments: “It Was Clearly A Joke”