With three laps to go in Stage 1 of the Charlotte Cup race, Alex Bowman dove to the inside of Bubba Wallace in the battle for fifth position.
Partway through the corner, Bowman’s No. 48 started to slide sideways and he overcorrected in an attempt to save it. Bowman shot up the track, directly into the right-rear of Wallace’s car in a huge hit. Both cars then slammed the outside wall, before spinning to the inside of the track and tagging the inside barrier as well.
William Byron was unable to avoid the wreck and hit his teammate in the No. 48, and all three cars fell out of the race due to crash damage. Tyler Reddick was right there but narrowly turned away from the melee as his No. 45 slid sideways.
There was a moment of concern as Wallace said nothing on the radio, and after some back-and-forth with the medical team, a stretcher was wheeled out to the No. 23. Thankfully, he didn’t need it, gingerly climbing from the car and slowly walking to the ambulance while mouthing the word ‘ow.’
All drivers were checked and released from the infield care center soon after.
“Yeah, it just got loose,” said Bowman. “I honestly have been really tight and I don’t know, as soon as it got to the exit of the corner, it snapped and kind of didn’t stand a chance. Unfortunately, grabbed too much wheel and over corrected into those two guys. I hate that for our Ally 48 team. Obviously, we had a pretty fast car. I also hate that for the the 23 [Wallace] and 24 [Byron] cars like just it’s fine to get loose and crash, but to ruin their days too really sucks.
“It’s on me. I just didn’t hang on to it well enough and just caught off-guard. I don’t know why I got as loose as I did I hadn’t been loose at all but it’s part of driving race cars and unfortunately I didn’t do a good enough job of it.”
Wallace spoke soon after, and he was in good spirits despite the heavy crash. “No warning,” said Wallace. “I saw it in the last second. The 48 [Bowman] came up and clipped us. No hard feelings, it’s just racing. It’s loose down there … Him and I don’t want to give up spots (and) he wants to get by me. But for pit road sake, to keep our day smooth, we want to stay in front of him. But he just got loose and, to be honest, the first hit wiped our brakes out. And so on the second hit, it got me good. But we’re good. We’ve still got nine fingers and nine toes, so we’re fine.”
Byron lamented that he “lifted right away, but couldn’t get low enough because (Bowman) kind of kicked back off the wall.”
This is Wallace’s first DNF of the Chase, and he will finish 37th with Bowman 38th and Byron 39th. It was an especially brutal ending for Wallace, who led some laps early and looked like a contender before fading slightly at the back end of the run.
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