Bubba Wallace does not believe he did anything wrong at Martinsville Speedway that resulted in his 23XI Racing team being penalized with two others for race manipulation. “We can all agree to disagree,” Wallace said Saturday at Phoenix Raceway. “It is what it is.
We’re here at Phoenix.” Wallace slowed on the final lap of the elimination race and was passed by Toyota teammate Christopher Bell going into Turn 3. Both drivers were running one lap down, but Bell needed the position from Wallace because it put him into a tiebreaker with fellow championship contender Wiliam Byron.
Bell had the tiebreaker on Byron to advance. But NASCAR penalized Bell for riding the wall in the final corners and it’s Byron who is racing for a championship. Wallace was fined $100,000 and docked 50 points.
His team was also fined $100,000 and docked 50 points while his spotter (Freddie Kraft), crew chief (Bootie Barker), and a team executive (Dave Rogers) are suspended from this weekend’s events. Wallace said he was unaware of the situation unfolding around him last weekend. Denny Hamlin, Wallace’s co-owner, also denied his driver did anything wrong and said a look at the right rear tire post-race showed it had gone bald.
“We were running our own race and started to bleed there really hard,” Wallace said. “I tried to hold off the 5 from getting to the next lapped car and just burnt my up, so a product of racing, and the frustrating part is we showed up there in the spring with a .