NORTH WILKESBORO, N.C. — Nearly one week after a final-lap penalty that cost him dearly at EchoPark Speedway, Bubba Wallace arrived at North Wilkesboro Speedway with a measure of acceptance and a mind to move on. “I mean, you kind of have to, right?” Wallace said.
Wallace’s wild swerve with half a lap remaining in last week’s NASCAR Cup Series showdown carried his No. 23 23XI Racing Toyota below the 1.5-mile track’s out-of-bounds markings. He crossed the start/finish line in second place with Toyota teammate Ty Gibbs pushing him to the stripe, but NASCAR officials issued a penalty after the checkered flag that demoted him to 29th — the final driver on the lead lap.
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Wallace and members of his 23XI team met in the competition officials’ hauler in Monday morning’s wee hours after the rain-delayed 400-miler. The penalty stood, but Wallace said on the eve of Sunday’s Window World 450 at North Wilkesboro (7 p.m. ET, TNT Sports, truTV, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) that he had a better grasp of what factored into the ruling.
“I mean, it is what it is,” Wallace said Saturday before Cup Series practice. “We got a better understanding of the rule. To me, I always thought it was like gaining position, but no, it’s gaining track position, which I totally did. So, it is what it is. I thought they would care about the data that I tried to give (the position) back, but the damage was already done. So, unfortunate and here we are.”
The decision was further explained in the latest edition of NASCAR’s “Hauler Talk” podcast, which noted Wallace’s No. 23 briefly nosed into the lead after his maneuver to the low lane. Trying to cede the position later, officials ruled, was immaterial.
The rule exists on superspeedway-style tracks (Daytona, Talladega, EchoPark) to keep the racing on the primary racing surface, aiming to avoid the perils of using the apron and barring drivers from creating dangerous merging situations to get back in line.
“I’ve never really been kind of in that scenario,” Wallace said. “I’ve had a couple of close calls, but I will say like, as I made the move and I’d seen where I was going to end up, I knew it was going to put everybody in a bad spot, and that was unfortunate. I don’t know. I mean, at the end of the day, if the 54 (Gibbs) didn’t push me at the line, I would have finished third, and I’m pretty sure they said that wouldn’t have been a penalty. So it’s like … I don’t know. I think NASCAR doesn’t ever want to be put into a situation where they have to make the call, and they always tell us to not put them in that situation, and unfortunately, I put them there. So all in all, a rule’s a rule. Cross over the line, oh well.”
The 27-spot penalty in last week’s finishing order corresponded to a 27-point dent in the Cup Series standings with six races left in the regular season. Wallace sits 13th in the standings, 55 points on the plus side of the provisional 16-driver Chase field.
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Wallace has been accustomed to weathering the pressures of the postseason bubble at points of his career, but he also expressed optimism in both his team’s performance and for the tracks remaining on the regular-season slate — including next week’s trip to Indianapolis Motor Speedway, where he’ll race as the defending Brickyard 400 winner.
“Good tracks for us, so yeah, and I think I said it before Atlanta: Man, we’ve been showing up with speed every weekend,” Wallace said. “Just whatever it is about the first-stage blues or the second-stage blues will bite us, but Atlanta was a solid race. Just an unfortunate hiccup on my end, so yeah, we’ll just go there and just hit base hits. We’ll be fine.“