Denny Hamlin reacts to Kyle Larson spinning out Bubba Wallace with ‘dive bomb’ at Chicago

Bubba Wallace went for a spin in Turn 11 on Lap 25 of Sunday’s Chicago Street Race after contact with Kyle Larson. According to Kelly Crandall of RACER, the No. 23 team’s SMT data showed that Larson dive bombed them into the corner.

Denny Hamlin talked about the incident on Monday’s “Actions Detrimental” podcast. Hamlin said that it was an impossible situation for Wallace’s team to inform him in time that Larson was coming below him in the corner.

“It’s the risk that you run by dive bombing in there,” Hamlin said. “A lot of times, you can catch people off guard by doing that, but if they don’t see you, it can really cause a massive pileup. Kyle just got close enough to the 23 [Wallace], he saw that the 23 was bottled up waiting on somebody else through that corner and just dove it in there. In order for that to get called, it would have to — that would be really tough.

“There’s just not enough time for the spotter to see the lunge into the corner, expect to process it, press the button, tell the driver, the driver then to process it to leave that extra car width — it’s asking a lot.”

Bubba Wallace speaks on tough day in downtown Chicago

Hamlin called it an “aggressive” move on Larson’s part. He opted not to place much blame on the Hendrick Motorsports driver.

“It was probably a little aggressive on the 5’s [Larson] part, but you’ve seen that pass done many times before,” Hamlin said. “The blame really goes to was he there or not? Yes, he was there, and the 23 team — again, this might be a Freddie [Kraft] question — but it seemed like they had some spotter issues on the 23 all day long.”

Wallace, who started from the rear, was making his way through the field when the spin occurred. He fell all the way to 32nd, before once again finding his way to the front in Stage 3. But then, he went for another spin courtesy of Alex Bowman. Wallace went from racing for a top 10 to finishing 28th. Despite the multiple incidents, Wallace said he was happy with the work he put in on Sunday.

“I’m just proud of the effort,” Wallace said. “You know, late call on the 5 that got us spun. Hated that. Just when you think everything’s going OK, but we were able to jump ship and switch up plans, put us right back in the race.

“So, man, I was passing cars, having fun, showing that we keep improving and keep building confidence. We’ll be fine. So, hate to see it end that way. It was fun. Fun with the 48 [Bowman]. No love lost, all good.”