HAMPTON, Ga. — It appeared Bubba Wallace was a few feet away from winning the Quaker State 400 at EchoPark Speedway Sunday night (July 12).
After recovering from an earlier spin, the 23XI Racing driver was inside of Ryan Blaney and Carson Hocevar for the last half of the final lap, with Blaney narrowly coming out on top. But shortly after the race had ended and the drivers had climbed from their cars, NASCAR assessed Wallace a penalty for advancing his position while below the double-yellow line. That penalty dropped the No. 23 car to the end of the lead lap, in 29th position.
“We’re gonna fight it,” Wallace said. “I mean, did I advance my position? … You’ve seen the race.”
The penalty came because on the backstretch of the final lap, Wallace received a push from Christopher Bell that propelled his car forward. But it also got his car out of control, causing him to drift below the double-yellow line, which is out of bounds on drafting tracks. By the time Wallace got back on the racing surface, he was three-wide for the lead. But Wallace was adamant that he never took the lead as a result of going down there.
“It [the rule] says “advancing your position,” which I did not do,” Wallace said. “I stayed third, and I was all over the brakes to make sure I did not advance. As soon as I turned, I’m like, ‘I’m going to wreck,’ and got on the brakes and kept it underneath me and still ended up side by side.
“That move should have propelled us to the lead, and it didn’t because I knew it was wrong, because my car did not like that move. So we’ll see what we can do, but I did not advance my position. I stayed third from entry of [turn] 3, all the way until 50 yards away [from the finish line when No.] 54 [Ty Gibbs] gave us a shot.”
Wallace and his team did protest the penalty afterward, spending 31 minutes in the NASCAR hauler as the footage was reviewed. But NASCAR did not go back on its original decision, and 23XI can’t appeal the decision past the post-race review period.
“A penalty’s a penalty,” Wallace said.
Whether Wallace was at fault or not, the penalty wiped out what would’ve been an impressive comeback by the 32-year-old. After starting the race in 22nd, he climbed to 10th by the end of the first stage. He was running in fifth entering turn 4 of stage two’s final lap when he moved down in front of Gibbs. Contact between the two ensued, which sent the No. 23 car spinning through the frontstretch grass.
After the race, Wallace and Gibbs had a confrontation about the incident.
“I just said ‘lift,'” Wallace said. “I said, ‘There’s an opportunity to give, and you didn’t.’ And he was like, ‘Well, don’t block me.’ And it’s like, bro, you hit me square in the bumper, right? The block was well ahead. You’ve seen it coming. We’ll be all right.”
Gibbs didn’t quite see the incident as going down the way Wallace described and seemed to take issue with his Toyota teammate’s way of handling the post-race conversation.
“I went to tell him sorry because he cleared himself and then [he] unfortunately showed a lot of disrespect,” Gibbs said. “But I don’t know, yeah, seems like it didn’t really work out for him, but I just tried to help him out there at the end, push him to win, but it didn’t happen.”
Still, Wallace spent the race’s final 60 laps rallying from the spin, even leading 10 laps in the final stage and having moments where it looked like he may win his first NASCAR Cup Series race of 2026. He at least should have scored his third top five in the past six races, but that comeback was wiped out all in an instant once Wallace chased his car down the track.
“It’s a bummer,” Wallace said. “I really hate it for the guys. It’s a nice rebound from getting spun there. It’s Atlanta. It’s another race for us. [We] just continue on.
Michael Massie joined Frontstretch in 2017 and has served as the Content Director since 2020.
Massie, a Richmond, Va., native, has covered NASCAR, IndyCar, SRX and the CARS Tour. Outside of motorsports, the Virginia Tech grad and Green Bay Packers minority owner can be seen cheering on his beloved Hokies and Packers.
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