Bubba Wallace was fined $50,000 for his actions following the checkered flag on Sunday on the Streets of Downtown Chicago.
Wallace door slammed winner Alex Bowman, who had his safety net down, into the wall in retaliation for something that transpired earlier in the race between them.
Meanwhile, Chase Elliott was not penalized at all for taking a swipe at Daniel Suarez under caution.
It seems, and without comment from NASCAR, this is speculation that the league drew a line in either shoving Bowman into the wall, and the amount of impact it took to do so, or doing what he did after Bowman unlatched his window net.
The NASCAR Cup Series continues its regular season at Pocono Raceway this Sunday.
The initial incident occured on Lap 25.
Racing for fifth off a restart, Bowman sent Wallace around and to the rear of the field, and Wallace was forced to spend the remaining laps crawling back through the field. He would finish 13th while Bowman won.
Bowman took responsibility for the incident.
“Yeah, I’d do that, too,” Bowman said. “I ruined his day. We had a really — the restart was chaotic. I just made every wrong decision I possibly could, and I was fighting with my windshield wiper switch trying to get the thing working and I couldn’t get it working and I was focused on that, missed the corner and cleaned him out. I locked all four tires up and slid right into him. I just messed up and absolutely ruined his day.
“I’m pretty hard on myself when I make mistakes like that, and I’ve been embarrassed about it since it happened.”
Bowman even tried calling Wallace during the rain delay and even followed up with a text before the race resumed in the hopes of trying to issue an apology but both went ignored.
“The rain delay was just a lot of me sitting there being embarrassed and being mad at myself,” Bowman said. “He has every right to be mad; I’d be mad, too. I tried to call him during the rain delay and I shot him a text. Nothing I can do to make it better, and I’m sure us winning probably only makes it worse.”
Bowman did not want to see a penalty levied against Wallace.
“No, he barely hit me,” Bowman said. “It was fine, and it was plenty deserved.”
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.