"I hope he chokes on the $200,000": When Darrell Waltrip confronted Rusty Wallace after a controversial All-Star Race finish

The NASCAR All-Star Race in 1989 left Darrell Waltrip fuming, Rusty Wallace hiding, and fans on their feet for all the wrong reasons. The event has long been known for raw emotion, big money and even bigger controversy, but few moments in its storied history match the chaos that year.

It was Wallace who walked away with the win, and Waltrip delivered one of the most iconic soundbites in NASCAR.

"I hope he chokes on the $200,000. That's all I can tell him. He knocked the hell out of me," Waltrip said on live television (via Fox Sports).

The 1989 NASCAR All-Star Race at Charlotte Motor Speedway, known as The Winston, had all the ingredients of a classic. The format had three segments, with $20,000 each for the first two winners and $200,000 for the final victor.

Darrell Waltrip drove the No. 17 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet and won the second segment. Rusty Wallace, in his No. 27 Pontiac for Blue Max Racing, won the first. The pair lined up on the front row of the 20-car field for the final run, with Waltrip on pole and Wallace just behind.

Darrell Waltrip during the 1970 30-lap feature at the Fairground Speedways. Source: Imagn

For eight laps, Wallace drafted behind the veteran, searching for a gap that never came. Then came Turn 4 on the penultimate lap. As Wallace dipped low, Waltrip inched down to defend and contact ensued. The No. 17 spun into the frontstretch and Wallace surged ahead, as the crowd erupted.

"We just ran out of room. I got under him and we touched. I backed out of the throttle and he spun. I didn't intentionally hit him," Wallace told Fox Sports.

Waltrip, who had already won the Daytona 500 earlier that season, was in no mood to forgive.

"Son of a gun if he didn't bump me just enough to get me around. And that scoundrel, he went on and won the race," Waltrip added.

The crowd's response was even louder than the engines. Until that point, Wallace was the popular up-and-comer and Waltrip the outspoken villain. But the bump changed everything, painting Waltrip as the wronged veteran and casting Wallace as a new Cup Series heel.

But the damage was done not just to Waltrip's car, but to Wallace's image as well.

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The Darrell Waltrip-Rusty Wallace rivalry ended with an infield brawl and a police-guarded night

Darrell Waltrip with Junior Johnson before the 1986 Daytona 500. Source: Getty

Chaos carried on post-race as Rusty Wallace pulled into Victory Lane, members of Darrell Waltrip's crew charged in. What followed was less a scuffle and more an all-out melee. One of Wallace's crew members, Todd Parrott, threw a shoulder block into a Hendrick team member. Soon, fists were flying in every direction.

"Man, everybody went crazy. Half the fans wanted to kill me. The whole infield was in a fight. I thnk they started punching each other and nobody knew who was punching who. So they all just started punching everybody… they're all rolling on the ground beating the crap out of each other," Wallace later recalled (via Fox).

Wallace barely made it out. NASCAR officials ushered him away in an ambulance, fearing for his safety. He was snuck through Charlotte Motor Speedway's underground tunnels and taken to the Speedway Club for post-race duties, but the boos only got louder there. From there, he was taken straight home.

That's where the real weight of the moment hit him.

"I had three armed security guards watch me all night long, because they thought the fans were going to kill me that night, because they were so mad at me because I spun Darrell Waltrip out," Wallace told Speed Sport.

Even his daughter noticed something wasn't right.

"My daughter came up to me in the middle of the night, she was only like eight years old, and said, 'Daddy, there's police officers downstairs, what's going on?"

It took years for the dust to settle between the two. Wallace would never win another All-Star Race after that night and neither would Waltrip.

(L-R) Darrell Waltrip, Richard Petty, Cale Yarborough, Buddy Baker, Bobby Alison, and David Pearson in 1975. Source: Imagn

But perhaps the most surprising twist of all is that they eventually buried the hatchet. Thirty-six years on, the scars have healed and the friendship between the two legends endures.