In hindsight, there was a little more to the crash on Lap 330 of the NASCAR Cup Series race at Dover Motor Speedway on Sunday that eliminated Bubba Wallace, Christopher Bell and William Byron from the finish.
The early TV replays showed that rookie Zane Smith drifted up into Wallace in the middle of Turns 1 and 2 and ultimately sent the 23XI Racing No. 23 around before collecting Byron and Bell.
At the time, Wallace largely bit his figurative tongue but made a veiled reference at non-contenders.
“(I) had the long ride over here on the golf cart to figure out what (I) want to say, and I guess turning 30, going to be a dad, you’ve got to be more mature,” Wallace said. “It’s a bummer. I hate it for our Xfinity, U.S. Air Force Toyota. Not the result we needed – back-to-back DNF’s.
“Bootie (Barker, crew chief) said it perfect Monday. I was pissed off and frustrated after Talladega – he said, we are going to have to grind our asses off for Dover – from practice, to qualifying, to the race. ‘It’s not going to be pretty.’
“I don’t think he meant that part – the wrecking out part was not going to be pretty, but we had to grind. I’m proud of the effort we put in every week, just unfortunate that we have no results to show for it. We will just go on to Kansas, where hopefully, we are not around any squirrels and go kick their ass.”
There might have been some misplaced animus towards Smith.
With the benefit of an on-board released after the race from Corey Lajoie, the incident seems to begin with Tyler Reddick in the other 23XI Racing entry taking Smith and Wallace three-wide to trigger the ordeal.
Reddick took responsibility over the radio as well.
Nevertheless, that makes two consecutive DNFs for Wallace, who has fallen from 10th to 15th in the championship standings, leaving him vulnerable to potential playoff anxiety during the summer months as he works to get back to Victory Lane.
Kansas next weekend is one of his best tracks.
Byron was a contender earlier in the race, just missing the Stage 1 victory in lapped traffic, ceding the position to Martin Truex Jr. in the closing laps. He had nowhere to go in this incident.
“I didn’t see much,” Byron said. “We were rolling on the bottom and something happened up top. The No. 23 (Bubba Wallace) got spun across the track, and we were there. We had a good No. 24 Liberty University Chevy early but couldn’t get through traffic very well out front. Once we got in the back, we were terrible in traffic. We didn’t have the balance today.”
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.
