{"id":11897,"date":"2022-10-17T10:30:41","date_gmt":"2022-10-17T14:30:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/?p=11897"},"modified":"2022-11-26T09:30:05","modified_gmt":"2022-11-26T14:30:05","slug":"nascar-bubba-wallace-dumps-and-shoves-larson-las-vegas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2022\/10\/17\/nascar-bubba-wallace-dumps-and-shoves-larson-las-vegas\/","title":{"rendered":"Park Bubba Wallace, but NASCAR created this mess"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Bubba Wallace spinning Kyle Larson was a mess of NASCAR&#8217;s own creation, and nothing will change, until the league does.<\/h2>\n<p><strong>Bubba Wallace<\/strong> stood outside the care center, as NBC&#8217;s Marty Snider asked him if what just happened on track was intentional.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Cliff (Daniels, crew chief) is smart enough to know how easy these cars break. When you get shoved into the fence, deliberately, like (<strong>Kyle Larson<\/strong>) did, trying to force me to lift &#8212; the steering was gone, and he just so happened to be there.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Translation, it was intentional. The incident on track, between the drivers in the in-field, and what will transpire in the days to come is a mess of NASCAR&#8217;s own creation.<\/p>\n<h3>The Incident<\/h3>\n<p>Shortly after the start of the second stage, Larson got loose and forced Wallace into the Turn 4 wall. In the heat of the moment, Wallace turned sharply down the track and hooked Larson into the frontstretch wall. Which collected <strong>Christopher Bell<\/strong> in the process.<\/p>\n<p>It was textbook retaliation that Larson saw coming. &#8220;He had a reason to be mad, but his race wasn&#8217;t over until he retaliated,&#8221; Larson said. &#8220;It is what it is. Just aggression turned into frustration and he retaliated.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But it didn&#8217;t stop there.<\/p>\n<p><a id=\"meupUVS3Sl14hlo2utlleA\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1433927061\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'meupUVS3Sl14hlo2utlleA',sig:'4UWST8gDV5ij0wg8IpOoWdJkr2hKAPeRzHJ-a5bMIQw=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'1433927061',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n<h3>The Shove<\/h3>\n<p>A few minutes later, Wallace exited his car, walked over to Larson in the grass, and shoved him a few times. He told Snider that Larson knows what message he sent.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He knows what he did was wrong,&#8221; Wallace said. &#8220;He wanted to question what I was doing and he never cleared me.&#8221;<\/p>\n<h3>Point the finger at NASCAR<\/h3>\n<p>Call out Wallace for what he did. Provided you&#8217;re not using it as an excuse for <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2022\/09\/12\/nascar-bubba-wallace-silenced-the-critics-at-kansas-speedway\/\" target=\"_self\">racist dogwhistling<\/a>. He should be suspended for the next race.\u00a0<del><\/del>But rather than focus on the symptoms of the issue, look at the cause.<\/p>\n<p>What transpired at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Sunday is a by-product of NASCAR&#8217;s &#8220;boys, have at it&#8221; attitude. Which ranges from laughable punishments to drivers for doing so (if at all) to using footage of those incidents to promote upcoming events.<\/p>\n<p>We saw it a decade ago when Jeff Gordon took out Clint Bowyer at Phoenix Raceway. An incident for which Gordon escaped without sufficient punishment. He was fined $100,000 and docked 25 points, but since he was already out of the championship fight it was basically a slap on the wrist.<\/p>\n<p>We saw it with Matt Kenseth and <strong>Joey Logano<\/strong> over the course of three races in 2015. We even saw it earlier this season at Gateway, with <strong>Denny Hamlin<\/strong> and\u00a0<strong>Ross Chastain<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2022\/06\/05\/three-big-stories-gateway\/\" target=\"_self\">acting like\u00a0children<\/a>. And will keep happening, until NASCAR clarifies the &#8220;boys, have at it&#8221; stance or does away with it.<\/p>\n<p>But the cynical pessimist in me thinks nothing will change and Wallace just gets fined for this. Fitting for what a clown show this year&#8217;s playoffs have turned into.<\/p>\n<h5>Featured Image Credit: Jonathan Bachman\/Getty Images<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bubba Wallace spinning Kyle Larson was a mess of NASCAR&#8217;s own creation, and nothing will change, until the league does. Bubba Wallace stood outside the care center, as NBC&#8217;s Marty Snider asked him if what just happened on track was intentional. &#8220;Cliff (Daniels, crew chief) is smart enough to know how easy these cars break. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3353,"featured_media":11903,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5],"tags":[827,62,514,270],"class_list":["post-11897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-nascar","tag-bubba-wallace","tag-kyle-larson","tag-las-vegas-motor-speedway","tag-nascar-playoffs"],"modified_by":"Nathan Reynolds","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3353"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11897\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}