Disaster struck just 27 laps into Saturday’s Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona. A multi-car crash unfolded at the 2.5-mile tri-oval after what looked like a push from Kyle Larson sent Bubba Wallace into Joey Logano and Kyle Busch.
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Wallace, Logano, and Busch were running three-wide on the frontstretch. The contact sparked a chain reaction for a 12-car pileup that swept up Alex Bowman, Austin Cindric, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., and Noah Gragson, among others.
Denny Hamlin, whose race was also ruined in the wreck, said that Wallace triggered the proverbial ‘big one’ by crowding two cars with insufficient space.
“It looked like to me that Bubba just squeezed those two guys below him down. You could just see that they’re there, two cars on the inside,” Hamlin said on his Actions Detrimental podcast.
“I don’t know what Freddie [Kraft, Wallace’s spotter] was calling. Maybe he was saying three wide top or not. I’m not sure. But he [Wallace] just squeezed on down there, and there was no room. So he ended up wrecking himself and obviously a few others,” he added.
Despite being Wallace’s co-owner at 23XI Racing, Hamlin didn’t mince words. He stressed that Wallace wasn’t “clear”, implying his decision was reckless. Hamlin even dismissed the idea that Larson’s contact set off the crash.
“The #5 [Larson] was already on him close, but no. That’s just the #23 [Wallace] not [being] clear. It’s just one of those not-clear moments,” Hamlin added.
Like the JGR veteran, former Hendrick Motorsports crew chief Steve Letarte also placed the blame squarely on Wallace. He explained that Wallace drifted left across the nose of Logano’s No. 22 Ford, forcing Busch and Logano together. That left Logna with no space to maneuver.
“Logano was out of the gas, and that’s it,” Letarte said, before giving Wallace the benefit of the doubt. Letarte explained that the No. 23 driver may not have realized two cars were tucked beneath him while he was in the middle lane.
For Wallace, the wreck spelled the end of his night, which he described simply as a chaotic sequence that unraveled too quickly to save.
