Alex Bowman admitted that he didn’t believe Bubba Wallace’s retaliation act during the Chicago Street Course over the weekend was worthy of a penalty considering the circumstances, but NASCAR disagreed.
NASCAR officials fined Wallace $50,000 on Wednesday for violating member conduct code when he slammed his car into the door of Bowman’s No. 48 during the cooldown lap of Sunday’s race.
The post-race confrontation sent an unsuspecting Bowman into the wall.
The situation followed an incident on Lap 25 when Bowman spun out Wallace, costing the No. 23 driver track position and a potential shot at winning the race. Wallace finished 13th while Bowman ended up picking up the eighth win of his NASCAR Cup Series career.
After the race, Bowman expressed that Wallace should not be punished, adding that he “has every right to be mad.”
“I’d be mad, too. I ruined his day. The restart was chaotic. I just made every wrong decision that I possibly could. I was fighting with my windshield wiper switch trying to get it working, and I couldn’t get it working. I was focused on that, missed the corner.”
“I locked all four tires and just slid right into him,” he continued. “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. The rain delay was a lot of me just sitting there being embarrassed and being mad at myself.”
After Sunday’s race, Wallace sits 17th in the playoff standings and 45 points outside the cutoff line for the 16-driver field.
Fox News’ Ryan Gaydos and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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