FOX’s cameras picked up an animated confrontation between JGR driver Christopher Bell and 23XI’s Bubba Wallace on the pit road at Watkins Glen following an on-track misunderstanding. 

Bell, who finished 21st, felt that Wallace got overtly aggressive while racing him at the end. Wallace had been spun around by John Hunter Nemechek with 15 laps to go, missing out on a possible top 10 finish, ending up in 29th. 

Wallace, similar to his teammate Tyler Reddick, had good pace and was looking at a strong finish before the spin. In an attempt to make up lost time and position, Wallace drove aggressively, which didn’t go down well with fellow Toyota driver Bell.

Speaking ahead of the race at Dover, Bell cleared the air about the mix-up with Wallace and said, “He obviously had a great race going, and I got messed up, and I had a rough race going into it, and just kind of was floundering in the back.”

In his conversation with Wallace, he said, “I just wanted to ask him why he chose to make it difficult on me in that moment, and he told me that he was super frustrated with other things that happened in the race. So that was up.”

Although their off-track confrontation didn’t escalate, Bell was asked how he usually speaks to drivers if they got into it on track. He said, “I’ve talked to people post-race on pit road. If they’re not around or if I don’t run into them, then I’ll call them or whatever, but I think you go either way."

Wallace on his side of things

Bubba Wallace regularly drives aggressively, but when he sees red, that aggression often comes off the wrong way. While Bell came up and spoke to Wallace, he wasn’t the only driver who felt Wallace’s aggression at Watkins Glen. 

Wallace spoke about the incident and said, “I got wiped out. When that happens, you see freaking red, and you don't care who is out there. You don’t care if your wife and kids are out on the race track, you are going to race the dogs [expletive] out of them because you had everything ripped away from you.”

Wallace, who has openly joked about being bad at road courses, said he was putting in the work to get better, and things were looking positive for the #23 Toyota before the spin.

“(Riley Herbst) was in that mix, I raced the [expletive] out of him. (Christopher Bell) was in the mix, I raced the [expletive]out of him. Whoever was in that mix, I didn’t care, just because my race was ruined 30 seconds beforehand. They have no idea, so I put myself in their shoes.”

Speaking about the conversation with Bell, Wallace said, “What you see on pit road, C-Bell is p***** that I raced him so hard, and that was simply me saying ‘I don’t give a d***.’ I just had my race ruined, and so I’m going to race everyone hard. I don’t care who it is.”

You can read more on the Daytona Racing Digest!

Written by

Debrup Chaudhuri

Edited by

Suyashdeep Sason