The animated conversation between Bubba Wallace and Christopher Bell after the NASCAR Cup Series race last weekend at Watkins Glen generated a lot of headlines but apparently none of them had it right.
“You all had it figured out, but every single one of y’all motherfuckers were wrong,” Wallace said with a laugh on Friday during a media availability at Dover International Speedway before explaining what actually happened.
Wallace, who notoriously has a love-hate relationship with road courses, was challenging for a top 10 when he was spun by John Hunter Nemechek with eight laps to go. He ultimately finished 29th.
“I got wiped out by the 42,” Wallace said. “We were in potential for a top-10, top-12 day. I got wiped out following (Tyler Reddick), and when I put so much freaking effort into becoming a better road course racer … I joke with you guys that I suck and I don’t give a damn about road courses; I really do. It’s a competitive nature and I push hard every time we get into the car and at that point in the race, everything was clicking.”
Then, because he was angry about what happened, he just raced extremely aggressive against everyone who came across him for the remainder of the race and that included teammate Riley Herbst and Toyota stablemate, Bell.
“When that happens, you see freaking red and you don’t care who is out there,” Wallace said. “You don’t care if your wife and kids are out on the racetrack, you are going to race the dog shit out of them because you had everything ripped away from you.
“(Herbst) was in that mix, I raced the shit out of him. (Bell) was in the mix, I raced the shit out of him. Whoever else was in that mix, I didn’t care just because my race was ruined 30 seconds beforehand. They have no idea, so I put myself in their shoes. What you see on pit road, C-Bell is pissed that I raced him so hard and that was simply me saying, ‘I don’t give a damn. I just had my race ruined and so I’m going to race everyone hard. I don’t care who it is.’”
Wallace said he told Bell and crew chief Adam Stevens that they were just ‘caught in the cross fire’ of the end of his bad day. Wallace called Bell this week, when he calmed down, and they were in the same page about it.
Bell just thought, in real time, that Wallace was just struggling on old tires and being unnecessarily difficult to pass. That would have been a scenario where Wallace would ordinarily cut Bell a break but he wasn’t being rational in that moment.
“I said, ‘I would understand that scenario and you would expect me to point you by,’ and I damn sure would,” Wallace said. “Just like every other time I’m on a road course bleeding spots, have at it. In that one, when I just went from everything is clicking — everything is still clicking — but I’m pissed off doing it now, so you were just caught in the crosshairs.”
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Update: Bell has addressed the incident too.
“We were floundering in the back but he obviously had a great race car,” Bell said. “I got messed up and was floundering in the back with him and I just wanted to ask him why he chose to make it difficult on me in that moment.
“He was super frustrated with other things that happened in the race so that’s that.”
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