It was all building up. The recent superspeedway like configuration of the Atlanta Motor Speedway, the past results at such tracks, a good racecar, flirting with the lead towards the end of the race, and yet Bubba Wallace, within seconds from the cusp of glory, found himself in the middle of a wreck fest, ultimately finishing in 13th.
Instead of taking away the winner’s trophy, Wallace was taking away a wrecked car, and a hit he describes as the hardest he’s had in his career. On top of that, the fan in the speedway behaved in a less than ideal way with the 23XI Racing driver, asking him to not come back to Atlanta.
Perhaps this was why the Talladega winner took out some of his frustration on the ‘dumb-a** race fans’ or, as Wallace put it, “darfs.”
ADVERTISEMENT
Article continues below this ad
He tweeted after the race, “Damn. Shitty ending🤷🏾♂️ P1 on the hardest hit list.. Shout out to the GA peeps in the infield telling me not to come back.. See you in July darfs.”
Damn.
Shitty ending🤷🏾♂️
P1 on the hardest hit list..
Shout out to the GA peeps in the infield telling me not to come back..
See you in July darfs
— Bubba Wallace (@BubbaWallace) March 21, 2022
Bubba Wallace explains what went wrong towards the end
ADVERTISEMENT
Article continues below this ad
In his post-race interview, Bubba Wallace explained how he was trying to approach his push for the lead towards the end. “I was trying to get a run on Byron. He did a really good job, his car was fast, and he was lifting to kind of block the run, which was the right thing to do,” Wallace said.
“So when the bottom [was] coming, I went down to block it and thought I had a good run to not let the 1 [of Ross Chastain] get inside, and he got inside, and it was all good because I knew they would stall out a little bit.”
What happened next was simply “bad timing” as Bubba Wallace and his pal Ryan Blaney got together and took part in a proper wreck fest fitting for a superspeedway track.
ADVERTISEMENT
Article continues below this ad