Bubba Wallace is facing a potential penalty later today in wake of his actions on Lap 94 of last Sunday’s South Point 400 at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Wallace felt wronged by Kyle Larson in the fact that he felt that Larson squeezed him into the Turn 4 wall at that moment.
Wallace said in an interview after existing the infield care center that he’s not used to racing up front but wanted to make it clear that he doesn’t lift for anyone. By not lifting, he scrapped the wall. If he had lifted like Kevin Harvick did in the same manner, he would have been fine. Instead, by scrapping the SAFER barrier, he got mad and wanted revenge.
Wallace said that his power steering went out in wake of the crash, but it looked fishy in the sense that he went from the high lane against the wall to shooting down the track to hit Larson’s right rear quarter panel and forcing the defending Cup Series champion into a crash.
The asthetics of the situation doesn’t look good. Larson admitted that if he were in Wallace’s shoes, then he’d be mad too. It’s human nature that Wallace would have the thought go through his mind to get retialiation against Larson. I mean we’ve all been there. We’ve had that person cut us off on the road or drive erratic to make us going into defensive driving mode.
However, you should never use your car as a weapon, especially at these speeds that these cars are turning. Especially with the safety scenario that we’re under being under a microscope too.
11 years ago on Sunday, to the date, the NTT INDYCAR Series lost Dan Wheldon in a frightening crash in Turn 2. With safety being on the forefront and focus of this Next Gen now, even seeing NASCAR conduct another 75 minute long meeting with the competitors on Saturday to go over the slides on how they’ll improve this car for 2023, then later seeing Wallace’s teammate Kurt Busch announce he’s stepping away from the sport on a full-time basis to get right which was also a few days after Larson’s teammate announced that he’d miss at least the next 3 weeks due to a concussion from Texas, he purposely spun a competitor in a dangerous area of the track.
Luckily Larson got out and walked away, or at least tried to. Wallace couldn’t let it go. If wrecking a driver with a family wasn’t bad enough, he went over to confront him and pushed him several times.
That stepped over the line which sparked Wallace to issue an apology on his social media channels on Monday night.
His peers took notice and have been against his moves. Joey Logano made his weekly appearance on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio on Tuesday and took a strong stance against what Wallace did.
“Retaliation is not okay in the way it happened,” Logano said. “If he spun him to the infield, maybe it’s a little better, but right-rear hooking someone in the dogleg is not okay. I don’t know if everyone realizes how bad that could have been. That could have been the end of Kyle Larson’s career. That to me was what was on the line. Or his life. That is the worst spot to get right-rear hooked into a corner.
“He (Larson) might have flush-hit that thing in the side and game over. There’s no room for that. You can’t do that. If it’s under caution and you’re banging doors, I don’t know that that’s okay, but at least you’re not putting someone’s life at risk. I don’t like using cars for a weapon. Just get out and fight him. That’s fine if that’s what you really want to do and that’s how you want to handle it.
“You can make someone’s life hell if you want to racing them, but do i think just straight up splashing them into the wall is okay, no, because the consequences are way bigger than just a race. and you’ll live with regret the rest of your life. That’s the bottom line. If you seriously injure somebody in retaliation for something that wasn’t huge, I don’t think you can live with yourself after that. I don’t want to take that risk.”
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