Wallace also being disciplined by team
HOMESTEAD, Fla. — Bubba Wallace is missing Sunday’s NASCAR race, and that’s evidently not his only sanction after losing his cool in Las Vegas, Nevvada last weekend.
Denny Hamlin — who, along with Michael Jordan co-owns the 23XI racing team that Wallace drives for — said Saturday that the team has dealt with matters in a way that goes “above and beyond” the penalties handed down by NASCAR.
Hamlin didn’t say what that means, choosing to keep those matters in-house.
“He understands where I stand, where the team stands, the values that we want to present on the racetrack, and he just didn’t represent it that well last week,” Hamlin said. “But, you know, in the grand scheme of things, we’re very happy with his progress. And he knows he’s still got some stuff to work on when he gets out of the race car.”
It’s not just Wallace in the spotlight right now.
Two weeks ago, NASCAR issued $200,000 in fines after finding that Stewart-Haas Racing driver Cole Custer slowed on the backstretch of the final lap of a race in Charlotte and helped teammate Chase Briscoe move up enough to reach the next round of the playoffs. Custer and his crew chief, Mike Shiplett, were both fined $100,000 after NASCAR determined Custer’s slowdown was deliberate.
And last week, Wallace intentionally wrecked reigning Cup champion Kyle Larson at Las Vegas in a dangerous act of retaliation. Wallace got suspended for this week at HomesteadMiami, and playoff contender Christopher Bell got caught up in that wreck — smashing his car and denting his chances of becoming NASCAR champion. Bell remains in the playoffs, but needs to rally.
“NASCAR’s like your parents a lot of times,” playoff leader and title contender Joey Logano said. “There’s a line of, you know, you’ve got to let the boys figure it out sometimes, and they’ll figure it out together and move on — or mom and dad has to step in a little bit and control the situation because it’s gotten out of hand. So, I believe NASCAR kind of decided it’s getting out of hand.”
The question — “what was he thinking?” — has been a storyline for much of this NASCAR season, with no shortage of temper-flaring incidents.
Ross Chastain, who has had a big first season for Trackhouse Racing, has been featured prominently in a few of those. He has clashed with Hamlin, had a starring role in a wreck that put a good dent in Kevin Harvick’s title chances, and his name was converted to a verb by Kyle Busch. Getting wrecked by Chastain is now, in NASCAR parlance, getting “Chastained.”
QUALIFYING: William Byron’s playoff push will start from the ideal spot Sunday. He won the pole in Saturday’s qualifying laps at Homestead-Miami, turning in a lap of 32.454 seconds.
XFINITY: Noah Gragson gave JR Motorsports two drivers in the Series championship finale with his win Saturday. He led 127 of the 200 laps in his eighth win of the season and the 13th of his Xfinity Series career.
F1: In Austin, Texas, Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz will start on the pole position for the United States Grand Prix after season champion Max Verstappen finished third in Saturday’s qualifying session that began shortly after his Red Bull team learned that founder and owner Dietrich Mateschitz had died at age 78. There was no immediate word where he died, or a cause of death.
Mohammed Ben Sulayem, president of motor sports governing body FIA, said Mateschitz was “a towering figure in motor sport.”