MOORESVILLE, N.C. — What happened in Vegas isn’t going to stay in Vegas for NASCAR.
A pressure-packed race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway in Sunday’s South Point 400 has put NASCAR in a difficult situation, and it involves two drivers who aren’t even in the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs.
An instance of very hard racing between 2021 Cup Series champion Kyle Larson and Bubba Wallace resulted in contact between the two cars in turn four.
What happened next depends on one’s viewpoint and feelings for either driver.
Wallace’s No. 45 Toyota hit the wall after Larson raced him aggressively. The Toyota then veered toward Larson’s No. 5 Chevrolet. The Wallace haters and Larson supporters believe Wallace intentionally turned the steering wheel into Larson’s Chevrolet to finish him off. Wallace contends he lost his ability to steer the car after hitting the wall.
The crash also took out one of the eight drivers still alive in the championship battle, Christopher Bell.
But it was obvious Wallace was furious and charged Larson after the two cars came to a stop. Wallace pushed Larson several times in an attempt to start a fight.
Larson, realizing that in this day and age a fight between those two could erupt into something far bigger, plus the fact Wallace is much bigger than him, wisely walked away to de-escalate the situation.
When a NASCAR official grabbed Wallace to get him to take the mandatory ride to the care center for medical evaluation, Wallace pushed his hand away.
NASCAR did not call either driver to transporter after the race.
But NASCAR is going to have to make a decision that is either going to anger one societal faction or another.
It isn’t because of the fight – that has become part of NASCAR lore going all the way back to the infancy of the sport. It’s whether the wreck was intentional.
So far this season, impacts with the NextGen car have created greater impacts to the driver’s body than the previous model. Alex Bowman may miss the rest of the season after sustaining a concussion in the September 25 race at Texas Motor Speedway.
Kurt Busch, the 2004 NASCAR Cup Series champion, announced on Saturday that he is stepping back from racing altogether as he continues to recover from a concussion suffered in a routine crash in July.
“It is best for me to shut it down,” Busch said Saturday at LVMS. “I will get back to 100 percent, I promise. If I’m cleared, maybe you’ll see me at a few select races.”
If it’s clear that Wallace intentionally crashed Larson, then NASCAR has to consider a suspension and/or heavy fine.
In NASCAR’s case, this simply isn’t two men getting out of hand on the Vegas Strip getting into a fight and it’s all forgotten once they are leaving Las Vegas.
This has the possibility of lingering because of the volatile fan bases who root for – or in this case, against – either driver.
In Christopher Bell’s case, it was obvious what happened.
“Bubba (Wallace) got run into the wall and then he retaliated on the five (Kyle Larson) and wiped us out,” Bell said.
When Wallace was asked his reaction to an innocent bystander involved in the crash, he gave a one-word answer.
“Sports,” Wallace said.
NBC Sports pit reporter Mary Snider asked Wallace if retaliation was acceptable at a high-speed, 1.5-mile oval and Wallace shot back, “Stop fishing.”
Prior to that, Wallace explained his view on what happened.
“Cliff (Daniels, 5 crew chief)) is smart enough to know how easy these cars break,” Wallace said. “When you get shoved in the fence, deliberately like he (Kyle Larson) did, trying to force me to lift – the steering was gone, and he just so happened to be there. I hate it for our team. We had a super-fast car – not on short run speed, we were kind of falling back there and (Kyle) Larson wanted to make it a three-wide dive bomb. He never cleared me. I don’t lift. I know I’m kind of new to running up front, but I don’t lift. I wasn’t even in a spot to lift, he never lifted either and now we are junk. Piss poor move on his execution.
“He (Larson) knows. He knows what he did was wrong. He wanted to question what I was doing, and he never cleared me. I just hate it for our team. Our McDonalds Toyota Camry was super solid – just needed to find a little bit on the short run and get the balance where we needed it. It would have been like Kansas and now the car is junk.
“Just racing right. Just have to do better, be better.”
Larson was asked if he were surprised when Wallace stormed at him after both were out of their cars.
“No, it didn’t surprise me,” Larson said. “I obviously made an aggressive move into (turn) three; got in low, got loose and chased it up a bit. He (Wallace) got to my right front, and it got him tight and into the wall. I knew he was going to retaliate. He had a reason to be mad, but his race wasn’t over until he retaliated.
“It is what it is. Just aggression turned into frustration, and he retaliated.
“I think with everything that’s been going on here lately, with head injuries, fractured ligaments, and all that, I don’t think it’s probably the right thing to do.
“We’ve all done it – maybe not all of us – but I have. I’ve let the emotions get the best of me before, too. I know he’s probably still upset. I’m sure with everything going, he’ll know that he made a mistake in the retaliation part and I’m sure he’ll think twice about that next time.”
“I saw him walking over, so I figured he would do something. Like I said, he had every right to be upset. I would rather him do that than tear up our cars in a dangerous manner. It is what it is.”
NASCAR finds itself in a difficult position because one driver has become the face of a social movement and the other had to rehabilitate himself after using an off-color term during an iRacing telecast on Easter Sunday 2020.
Either way, it won’t be a popular decision, once again, depending on one’s viewpoint.
As for the positive of the weekend, Trackhouse Racing nearly became the first team to make NASCAR’s “Championship Four” with driver Ross Chastain.
He was in the lead in the closing laps and raced hard trying to find a way to fend off a determined Joey Logano of Team Penske. In the end, Logano was able to finally use a racing line that put him ahead of Chastain’s Chevrolet.
Once in the clean air, Logano was able to pull away for the win and become the first driver guaranteed to race in NASCAR’s Final Four.
“I’m sure I can go back and find a few things, and to run the top there and let him get inside of me, I thought I had one more corner to do that, and he just got positioned on me there on the frontstretch, and we were just really tight,” Chastain said afterwards. “That was all we had. There was a clear difference in tires there, so we fully believed that we could hold him off and win the race on the tires we had, and Joey did a good job of getting through the field. At the end there, I hope I’m racing that guy for a really long time. Like we’ve been saying all year, this is the arrival of Trackhouse, and I wouldn’t want to be doing it with anybody else.”
In just its second season in the Cup Series, and its first season since purchasing Chip Ganassi Racing in 2021, Trackhouse Racing and team owner Justin Marks has become one of NASCAR’s most positive stories. In a season of controversy where some team owners have claimed NASCAR’s business model as unsustainable, Trackhouse has won three races and has two races left for Chastain to make it into the Final Four at Phoenix.
This is the type of storyline that NASCAR should be promoting, but instead, it is once again having to deal with an unexpected controversy because of what happened in Vegas.