CONCORD, N.C. — Walking into the media center for his Saturday pre-race press conference at Charlotte Motor Speedway, Bubba Wallace greeted reporters with a joke to lighten the mood before answering questions related to last weekend’s finish with 23XI Racing co-owner Denny Hamlin.
“It’s like sitting in class and the kids you always get in trouble with just staring at you,” Wallace said.
Laughter quickly turned to sighs as Wallace reflected on the time between the Kansas finish, where he was put into the wall by the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing driver, and entering the track.
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“It was definitely a somber week, for sure, and I hate that it got to that point,” Wallace said.
What wasn’t on anyone’s radar was an impromptu discussion Wallace said he had with Hamlin just prior to his availability.
“Denny and I just talked 30 minutes ago and it was a good heart-to-heart conversation, came from a place of peace,” Wallace said. “Went better than I thought it would. And he shared his side of things and I shared mine, and we had common ground. It was kind of funny because I kind of sent him on a detour when I said you can go first and then he started talking and five seconds in and I said, ‘just so you know, I’m not mad about getting fenced going for the win,’ and his eyes are like ‘oh well, I need a second to reposition where I’m going to go.’
“That’s not going to be the last time that I’m battling for a win and it doesn’t go our way in that sort of fashion, whether that’s Denny or anybody in the field. But I’ll be a little gracious here and say 95% of the people on this side of the catchfence look at that move as …. oooof …. right? That’s it. I don’t fault Denny Hamlin for racing for a win, racing for his team, his sponsors. I get the question a lot, ‘what’s it like racing Denny on the racetrack?’ No offense to them, but I can give two [expletive] because he’s a competitor, and he has labeled it that way.”
Hamlin spoke to the media after Saturday’s qualifying session and provided his perspective on the conversation with Wallace.
“I think it’s important that I listen,” Hamlin said. “The biggest thing is just listening and just like being a race car driver, I think what’s made me successful is continuing to evolve and trying to get better. I feel as though it was important for me to kind of listen to his perspective and also give mine. We had that respect for each other and I think that that obviously went very well, and feel like we’re in a good place.”
Wallace noted that one of the bigger points of frustration was nobody in the Toyota camp winning at Kansas after having five drivers start up front on the final overtime restart.
The momentum lost by Hamlin in the final corner as he washed up the track, putting Wallace’s No. 23 in the wall, opened the door for Chase Elliott to sideswipe Hamlin on the inside off Turn 4 and steal the victory to punch his ticket to the Round of 8.
After returning to North Carolina to decompress from Kansas, tension mounted between the two drivers as nothing had been hashed out before Hamlin went on his “Actions Detrimental” podcast on Monday with the headline “I won’t apologize.”
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“It was just the way it was kind of handled behind the scenes. Just kept going, kept adding fuel to the fire,” Wallace said. “I expressed my displeasure now with Denny [Saturday], and he totally respected it. Because I’m a guy that if we have confrontation and it’s not settled, like it’s lingering, and then now, like I’m in this spot to where I’m 26 points out. I expressed to him what you would need from your drivers to be 110% focused on what to do, how to execute, go out there and beat SVG, and I had a dark cloud over my mind all weekend long.
“The conversation allowed him to see things from a different perspective. Denny usually doesn’t do that, but it allowed him to have that opportunity. As much as I wanted to come in here and M-F, the guy, the competitor, Denny, the conversation went better than expected.”
Hamlin made note that scheduling conflicts didn’t allow for him and Wallace to be in the same place at the same time and knew at-track Saturday would be the best time to have a ‘face-to-face’ conversation.
Hamlin also believed after the two acknowledged each other on pit road at Kansas that any friction left over had subsided.
“I didn’t know he was upset,” Hamlin admitted. “I should have at least checked with him to make sure. Truthfully, I don’t think he faults me in trying to get a win. I think he understood the significance of the win to me, personally, the significance of me winning right now in the short term. I think that we have an understanding and it just took a 15-minute talk to kind of hear each other’s perspectives, and truthfully, I understand his perspective after listening.”
What remains for Sunday’s Round of 12 elimination race (3 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App) will need to be nothing short of Wallace’s best road-course performance if he wants to advance and keep his Cup Series championship hopes alive.
Both Wallace and Hamlin are looking ahead, but the end result of last weekend could spell the end of one’s playoff run while the other continues on.
“I’m sure it’s a difficult thing to juggle. Like it’s really good if I get 60 wins and it’s really good, but man, also really good if the car that I own gets locked in the next round and a lot of money on the line,” Wallace said about Hamlin’s thought process at Kansas. “There’s a lot of layers to all of that. I would assume you don’t think about that in the moment you’re going for a win and you do what you got to do. I appreciate Denny’s comments. Never want him to back down in any scenario, but I didn’t get a chance to see the rest of the corner and so, yeah, that sucks.”
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