Coming off a restart, Zane Smith and Bubba Wallace made contact sending the 23 car into traffic and taking out William Byron and Christopher Bell. Wallace, Byron, and Bell were all knocked out of the race at Dover. A big change in this NASCAR race.
Bubba Wallace was running 11th at the time of the wreck. Byron and Bell had progressively made their way through the field. None of them were having great runs but trying to make the most of their day and get a top-10 finish.
Coming off of Turn 2 on the restart, Wallace was tapped on his left rear by Smith. That was enough to send him around and cause quite a wreck.
Christopher Bell has now wrecked in every race for the last month. Four straight weeks. In that time his best finish was P17 at Texas. His other finishes in that time have been P35, P38, and P34.
William Byron started the race P3. However, he was mired back in traffic for a lot of the second half of this race. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time when Bubba Wallace came across the track.
“I don’t know I can only just sit here and you have the long ride over here on the golf cart to figure out what you want to say. I guess being 30, about to be a dad, gotta be more mature,” Wallace said after leaving the care center.
He may or may not have referred to Zane Smith as a “squirrel” during his postrace comments as well.
Bubba Wallace has first big setback of 2024
Looking at Bubba Wallace’s season as a whole, the last two weeks have really been the low point. Coming off of his top-10 at Texas, I don’t think Bubba saw back-to-back DNFs coming. Then again, Talladega and Dover are treacherous, and anything can happen.
The good news, Wallace has built up a good amount of points at this point in the season. Bad news, he is going to lose ground to 16th place in the standings. More good news, the season heads to Kansas, Darlington, and Charlotte next. That is where he will rebound.
Last season in those three races, Wallace was P4, P5, and P4. Those are three races that Wallace could potentially win if all goes well for him. The only problem is, nothing has really gone well for him in the last couple of weeks.
Bubba Wallace is in a better position at this point in the season than he was last season. That means he can (kind of) afford to make these mistakes. Moving forward he can’t let that continue or all of this early season progress will be wiped away for good.
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