NASCAR Cup: Bubba Wallace defends his generation against veterans of sport

By AMANDA VINCENT

Second-year Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series driver Darrell “Bubba” Wallace Jr. has become the unofficial spokesperson, so to speak, for drivers criticized by series veterans for “racing too hard.” Wallace, himself, caught the ire of veteran Ryan Newman after an incident in the Bojangles’ Southern 500 at Darlington (S.C.) Raceway on Sept. 1.

At Darlington, Newman gave Wallace the finger, but a week later at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Wallace said Newman told him, “No harm, no foul.” Still, Wallace attributed the incident to veterans not liking the younger class of drivers racing them hard.

“Walking through the garage last weekend in Indy, he said something like, ‘Ah, I was kind of frustrated but no harm, no foul,’ and I was like, ‘Oh yeah, it’s just you old guys just hate being raced at any time on the race track,’” Wallace said of Newman on Sept. 13 during his media availability at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Earlier this season, Kevin Harvick, who has been a full-time Cup Series driver since the second race of the 2001 season, stated on his “Happy Hours” show on SiriusXM NASCAR radio that racing veterans of the series in the early 2000s the way the younger drivers race veterans these days would result in getting punched.

Wallace recounted an exchange between himself and Ryan Preece, a rookie in the Cup Series, after the first Las Vegas race of the season in March. He texted Preece after the race, apologizing for “racing him too hard,” to which Reece responded by asking why he was apologizing.

“He was like, ‘Dude, why are you apologizing for racing hard?’ And I was like, you know what? You’re absolutely right. We were racing hard; we got out. We didn’t shake each other’s hand, but we weren’t pissed off at each other; it was just one of those days. It’s what we do,” Wallace said of his interaction with Preece. “We get paid to race, not fall in line and not race the other guys as hard. I don’t know if you were racing 20 years ago in this series, and it wasn’t like this. Well, it’s a new day. (Expletive) changes every day. Get accustomed to it.”

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Posted by ard2012 on September 20, 2019. Filed under Breaking News,Featured,Monster Energy NASCAR Cup,NASCAR. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry