Breaking It Down: Reflecting back on the week that was for Bubba
As the NASCAR season begins to wane and the playoff field whittles down to just a handful of drivers, storylines typically follow suit as speculation runs rampant regarding who will punch their ticket to the Championship Four in Phoenix.
However, this week has been an exception to the rule thanks to the captivating (to say the least) actions of Bubba Wallace, whose retaliation and confrontation of Kyle Larson has clouded airways and plastered social media timelines in its aftermath.
Even Joey Logano’s Championship Four securing win in Sunday’s South Point 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and Chase Briscoe’s resilient drive to a top-5 finish when he needed it most have taken a backseat to the spirited discussion surrounding Wallace’s emotional explosion.
We’ve all seen it by now: after getting squeezed into the wall by Kyle Larson coming off of Turn 4, Wallace wasted no time expressing his displeasure with the defending champ. After promptly hitting Larson's car in the right rear, causing both of their cars to spin and hit the wall, Wallace jumped from his crumpled race car and began shoving Larson, an act that Larson had no interest in reciprocating.
As speculators rushed to take stances of moral high ground and detest Wallace’s acts, a key aspect of this situation has gone overlooked … what are the broader implications and what led us to this point?
Taking the brunt of the collateral damage was Christopher Bell. Just one week after his season-saving win in Charlotte, his championship hopes suffered a major hit as he could not quite sneak by the premeditated wreck, leaving him to retire from the race early at no fault of his own.
Although Bell kept a level head about the situation, he finds himself in a must-win scenario, just one week after narrowly escaping the same predicament. At the surface, Bell is nothing more than a victim of someone else’s mess, a fact of racing that every driver must come to terms with.
Yet, it opens up a can of worms that leaves far more questions than answers.
In terms of moving forward, the championship picture is forever altered by this incident. All of a sudden, Bell, one of the drivers with the most momentum, is now mired deep below the points cutoff line. Not only does this affect his season, but it also opens the door ever-so-slightly more for dark horses like Chase Briscoe or a winless Ryan Blaney to sneak in.
Again, dark horses have made their way to the Championship Four in the past and fizzled out quietly. However, in the case of Briscoe or Blaney, a ticket to Phoenix could set the stage for one of the biggest upsets in playoff history.
Why? Well, let’s look back to Phoenix’s race earlier this spring. Not only did Briscoe go home as the only driver to win in the Gen 7 at Phoenix, but Blaney was the dominant car for most of the day. Had it not been for a poor last pit stop, Blaney very well could have secured his first victory of the season at Phoenix this year.
Now one race closer and Bell facing adversity, if either Blaney or Briscoe make it to the final four, they have a case to go from championship contender to championship favorite overnight.
Many more dominoes must fall this week and next for this scenario to play out, but Bell falling victim to friendly fire is the first one to tip over. Not to mention, with the roller coaster that the playoffs have been so far, it's fair to say more will be falling before the haulers pack up and head to Phoenix.
Additionally, with the controversy surrounding the recent repeal of William Byron’s penalty for wrecking Denny Hamlin under caution, much has been made of how NASCAR elected to invoke discipline upon Wallace for his act?
While the opportunity is here to set a precedent from Wallace’s actions, past precedents such as Byron’s scenario, Noah Gragson’s penalty for a similar wreck at Road America, and the many fines handed out by NASCAR after a physical altercation may leave little space to send a message.
Even with the excessive nature of Wallace’s actions, it would take breaking precedents that NASCAR has stood behind in order to condemn the act at a level that many called for, which would forever change how the sport approaches conflict in its own regard.
NASCAR chose to suspend Wallace for one race -- he'll miss Sunday's event at Homestead-Miami Speedway -- but he'll return for the final two races, next week at Martinsville and of course, the Phoenix season-ending and championship-deciding event. He did not receive any points loss, nor was he fined heavily, as many fans had hoped.
Even though Bubba apologized -- and rightly so -- one day after the Vegas debacle, saying he was sorry to his team, Toyota, his sponsors and Bell, he inexplicably did not offer an apology to Larson.
Looking back, there’s also an element of hindsight that leaves fans to wonder:
* Would Wallace have pulled such a move if Larson was in the Round of Eight (instead of having been eliminated the week before at the Charlotte Roval)?
* To an extent, drivers traditionally give some leeway to drivers competing for the championship, but history also shows that they are not immune to retaliation. Judging by Wallace’s overflowing anger that led him to pick a fight with Larson, one could infer that he was acting on emotion rather than logic. That said, the Round of Eight is no small feat, and we’ll never know for sure if it would have influenced the scenario.
However, on the flip side of this hypothetical is that the caution that put Bell in the Round of Eight is the same one that knocked Larson out of it. Which leads us back to the culprit of last week’s Breaking It Down column: the sign in Turn 6 that changed everything. Had that caution never came out, the landscape of this situation would be vastly different.
Had that been the case and Wallace proceeded to wreck a playoff driver intentionally, public outrage would be at an all-time high. Furthermore, it would raise the question of whether or not retaliation against a playoff driver would constitute an even bigger punishment.
Although we’ll never know, the situation will go down in NASCAR history as is for the controversy and speculation surrounding it. Now with Wallace suspended for one race, these past two weeks have reaffirmed a trope of racing that we often don’t realize in the moment; whether a loose lug, a gust of dirty air, or in the case at the Roval, a stray sign, the smallest of details can change an entire season, and sometimes the sport as we know it.