Kyle Petty is generally unfiltered in his analysis on NBC Sports broadcasts and he pulled no punches on Monday when he suggested Bubba Wallace and Ty Gibbs were “fragile” for declining a pre-race, pre-taped interview before the regular season cutoff race.
Gibbs and Wallace were amongst the three drivers, alongside Daniel Suarez, who was racing on points for the final Cup Series playoff spot prior to the Coke Zero Sugar 400 last week at Daytona. For what it’s worth, Suarez accepted, but Petty offered a harsh assessment of the others during the NASCAR on NBC podcast.
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“For professional athletes to refuse interviews is unacceptable in any game,” Petty said. “Unacceptable to your fans. Unacceptable to the sport. It’s just not — Ty Gibbs did the same thing. He didn’t want to do an interview.
“I don’t know how these guys think that’s acceptable in any world because that’s what you’re here for. That’s what they pay you the money for,” continued. “And it’s that stupid saying — that’s why you make the big bucks, dude. You got to handle it. Put it on your shoulders and carry it. If mentally he is that fragile, then maybe this is not the game for him. You know, honestly.”
Wallace ended up advancing to the playoffs and responded to Petty on Thursday when asked about the commentary during media day for the Cup Series playoffs in downtown Charlotte. He says he fulfilled his media obligations on Wednesday before the race when he participated in a press conference over Zoom, which allowed him to focus on the task at hand over the weekend.
“That was the most important thing,” Wallace said. “As much as talking to media is really important, I’m sorry [but] y’all don’t pay my bills.”
He said that with a laugh surrounded by the traveling media corps. He said he didn’t appreciate what Petty said because it shined a negative light on his PR representative. Petty would argue that a Zoom teleconference with traditional media is different than a requested sit-down before one of the biggest races of the season with a television partner.
“You get back and you see that ‘Bubba Wallace is mentally fragile and doesn’t want to do interviews,’ and [my response was] I was good,” Wallace said. “I could have stayed on pit road [after the race] and talked to y’all for hours but I guess people handle their stress differently because absolutely, I was stressed to the max.
“I’ve never been stressed like that before. I’ve never been in this situation before.”
Wallace said that he has never had to experience a cutoff race before with that kind of pressure in having to manager a points advantage or potentially needing to win. Thus, Wallace said he made a request to NASCAR that he conduct his required weekly press time on Wednesday instead of Saturday at the track, and that request was granted.
“Now that I’m here, I’m experiencing some things I never have before and [learning] how to handle it,” Wallace said. “Let’s talk to media. Let’s give them, ‘hey, I’m stressed out on Wednesday and I’m going to be stressed about it until the checkered flag falls on Saturday’ but let’s keep talking about it? ‘Hey, how do you feel?’
“Are [the media] going to come up and talk to me in Daytona at [Noon] and then one o’clock and ask me the same questions?” he asked. “Well, I answered that on Wednesday. I’m stressed. So, for it to offend people that I declined an interview … I didn’t really decline. We did our obligations and we made sure we were focused on the task at hand, which was the most important thing.
“That was the main goal in all of that.”
Perhaps realizing that his commentary about mental fortitude was heavy-handed, Petty softened his stance later in the same podcast but was still adamant that Wallace should not be in the business of declining the television partner.
“I think Bubba gets stronger and being in these positions will make him stronger mentally,” he said. “Once you get that experience and once you’ve been there I think you learn and he gets stronger. It’s trial by fire. If we come back in three years and he’s in this situation again, and he’s still doing the same thing, then you have to question something. But I think at this point in time, I give him a little bit of the benefit of the doubt.
“But, listen, not doing interviews is never acceptable. You’ve got to take the good with the bad in this sport. When you win, if you want us to come talk to you, expect us to come talk to you also when you lose. And when things are good, if you want us to talk to you, you got to talk to us when things are bad. I think that’s just a slap in the face in a lot of ways to fans and the media and everybody because you’re not above that.”
Gibbs has not responded to Petty.
