Bubba Wallace was spun on Lap 25 on the Chicago Street Race by Alex Bowman and never forgot it.
Racing for a spot inside the top-five 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.
After the race, during the cool down lap, Wallace door slammed Bowman into the wall. The latter had his window net down and NASCAR will review it for potential punitive action later in the week.
Bowman took responsibility for all of it and doesn’t blame Wallace for doing it.
“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.”
This is not there first conflict as they had a run-in at the Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL in 2019.
Bowman says he doesn’t want NASCAR to penalize Wallace.
“No, he barely hit me,” Wallace said. “It was fine, and it was plenty deserved.”
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.