Ross Chastain created somewhat of a reputation for himself last season which Freddie Kraft, the spotter of Bubba Wallace aptly termed as the “don’t give a f**k tour.” However this year, the frequency of the Chastain-incited incidents lowered.
Maybe he took in all the criticism and worked on his craft.
But then again, we had Talladega, a race towards the end of which, there was another Chastain-incited incident that not only sent the race in a second overtime but also attracted a lot of criticism his way.
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Yet Freddie Kraft doesn’t think he is to be blamed this time for the carnage that ensued because of contact between him and Noah Gragson.
Bubba Wallace’s spotter speaks on the massive Talladega wreck which Ross Chastain started
Speaking in a recent episode of the ‘Door Bumper Clear’ podcast, Wallace’s spotter shared his opinions on the Chastain-Gragson incident at Talladega.
“I know it’s easy to say its the ‘don’t give a f**k tour’ rolls on,” Kraft said.
“But I think, if you listen to my audio coming to green, we were about 3rd or 4th in that line and I just said to Bubba, ‘The #42 is leading, the #1 is second in this line going to ship this kid at some point.’”
A view of what happened from the No. 1 car. pic.twitter.com/bklE3GB1xc
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) April 23, 2023
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Freddie Kraft absolves Chastain of any wrongdoings
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Kraft praised Gragson for his “pretty good job” as he discounted his “untimely push” to Harrison Burton as nothing “egregious.”
“But in this situation, Ross isn’t gonna ride behind Noah. If you know Ross and you know the way Ross races, he’s gonna do everything he can to get rid of you and especially with the #5 behind him,” the spotter added.
“And they’re just shoving. He definitely shoved Noah up a lane, the #5 is up, Ross is shoving him… the whole opens up. And it’s the overtime restart. He’s not gonna go, ‘Oh come on back down now, it’s gonna be fine’ He’s gonna fill the hole and he was probably down to his wheel almost when Noah decided to come back down and close the hole off,” Kraft explained.
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He added how Gragson’s race was over at that point.
“You have two options, you can get out of line or you can just wreck half the field and they try to squeeze the whole back close and it was way too late and they caused the big one,” Kraft claimed.
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“But I don’t blame Ross at all for that.”