The developing feud between Ricky Thornton Jr. and Chris Madden that took center stage during Saturday night’s feature for the World Finals at The Dirt Track at Charlotte goes much deeper than just on-track incidents.

On Saturday night, Madden passed passed Thornton for the lead on lap 3 and Thornton took exception to the way he was passed giving Madden a shot to the left rear quarter panel as soon as Madden got around him.

The animosity did not stop there. At lap 32, during a long green flag run, Thornton was able to track Madden down and again gave him a shot in the left rear quarter panel.

READ: Bobby Pierce Explains What Went Wrong During Saturday Night’s World Finals At The Dirt Track At Charlotte

Following the race, Thornton, who finished second, was clearly not happy with Madden. When asked by Hannah Newhouse what he needed to win, Thornton said, “I guess guys quit throwing yellows or whatever the hell they were doing around the top. I don’t know if they were blowing tires or what, but I feel like every time we get a little bit of a run we get a yellow. Of course, right when we get to traffic.”

He then appeared to direct his ire towards Madden, “I don’t know, second left side he needs. I guess he needs them more than I do. So, hopefully he goes to Senoia next week, we’ll take care of it.”

A post race photo from Saturday night taken by DirtonDirt.com’s Zach Yost and shared by Tyler Erb showed both Thornton and Madden appearing to have words with each other as third place finisher Mike Marlar stood by.

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According to DirtonDirt.com’s Kevin Kovac, “The pair exchanged words in victory lane and later in the pits they were separated by security.”

A source also informed Stock Car Report that a crew member for Madden informed Thornton that he didn’t belong there and then shoved him. Security was then called to intervene.

Kyle McFadden at FloRacing would later report that Thornton informed Madden he didn’t like “how I got ran over earlier in [Saturday’s] race” and that the contact “killed [Thornton’s] left-front” suspension.

Thornton also informed FloRacing, “We were discussing the race. He wasn’t happy with me. I wasn’t happy with him. We left it at that and parted ways, and then his crew guy wants to start fighting. Kind of is what it is.”

Madden shared, “I ain’t listening to nobody’s mouth.”

Both Thornton and Madden also shared with FloRacing that the confrontation stemmed from the on-track incidents on both Friday and Saturday nights.

Thornton said that Madden “clobbered me” and explained the suspension damage saying, “Instead of my steering being straight, it was turned to the right by a quarter of a turn.”

“It knocked it pretty far out. After that, I got to him a couple times, and he kind of chopped me. When he chopped me, it killed the nose and knocked the whole right-front bumper way up. After that, I couldn’t turn down the corner like I needed to. This place, you need so much speed, any time you lose part of your nose like that is not ideal. Other than that, if we could’ve got to traffic, we might’ve had a shot to try something,” he elaborated.

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Madden countered Thornton’s comments sharing that Thornton “left the door open in one and two, and I filled the hole. And he tried coming on back when I was there.”

He added, “We barely touched. If he calls that something, then he has a lot ahead of him in the racing world. He tried to crash me twice after that. That’s not racing, man.”

Madden also referenced Friday night’s feature that saw the two come together, “[Friday] he spun out up here in one and two. I’m in the middle of the racetrack, and he comes back across the racetrack. And he’s plumb sideways. I guess he thinks I ran into him then. He’s the one that spun out, was all up in the cushion, whatever. It is what it is. He can think what he wants to. I ain’t going to lose no sleep over it.”

Interestingly, Madden made a point that it wasn’t just Thornton who was mad at him, but Bobby Pierce was as well, “Bobby tried to wreck me in the dash. I just drove by them. I didn’t have to be aggressive with nobody.”

Now, dirt late model insider Racin’ Jason shared his experience of what went down and alluded to the feud being much more than the on-track incidents.

He said during the most recent episode of Rippin’ the Lip on X, “Here’s my perspective of it. They didn’t have victory lane where they usually have it on the pit road right there. At Charlotte there’s a pit lane that goes all the way around the track so you can come out the back shoot to qualify heat race or whatever. But they moved victory lane to the middle of the race track. So I was standing at the fence there and listening to RTJ. He had me laughing like hell in victory lane. So I said, ‘Okay, that was funny as hell.’ So I walked off.”

“Smoke, [one of the show’s co-hosts], calls me. I was in my car. Smoke called me, ‘Hey, what’s going on? What’s going? Somebody got pushed.’ I said, ‘Huh? Are you freaking kidding me?’ … He said, ‘Hey man, you need to go back down there. You need to go to the pits to find out what’s going on.’ … I went back down through the pits and I’m standing there. I’m at the Koehler’s. And I’m talking to the crew chief’s wife and she was telling me what was going on and stuff. And I was like, ‘Okay, here we go.’

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“I’d say about five minutes later here comes RTJ with the car and everything all loaded up. And I’m talking RTJ and he’s just laughing about it. He’s just laughing. So Kyle McFadden walks up. And I’m talking to Kyle McFadden. I said, ‘Man, what did I miss? Man, what happened?’ So he told me what happened and everything. I said, ‘Man, I don’t know what to tell everybody. Man, I don’t know what to say.’ He says, ‘Man, don’t worry about it.’ He says, ‘I’ll put it out there. Besides, I get paid for it, you don’t.’ I said, ‘You know what, man, thank you. You’ve taken a burden off my shoulders, man. I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you.’ So that’s what happened.

He then added, “There’s some heated stuff going on between those two teams. I don’t know if I can go into detail about it. But I know what’s going on. I know the whole story. It’s not good. It’s not good at all. I really don’t know how else I can put that. There’s some inside stuff that’s going on. And It’s not good. And I hope it gets cleared up, but I don’t see it happening any time soon. So there you go.”

Later on during the show, Kyle McFadden showed up and corroborated Racin’ Jason’s comments. He said, “Obviously, things had been brewing between those two for at least a few days. Obviously, there’s always more to the story. That’s all I’m going to say to that.”

He then added, “If there’s anything to know about Ricky and Chris it’s that they don’t back down from what they think is right.”

What do you make of there being more to the confrontation than what happened on the track?

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