NASCAR Expert Shuts Down Bubba Wallace–Kyle Larson Conspiracy at Darlington

NASCAR expert Jeff Gluck has ruled out a conspiracy theory, which alleged a link between Bubba Wallace’s contact with Kyle Larson in the last leg of the race, and the race win secured by Wallace’s team 23XI co-owner Denny Hamlin at Darlington.

With just a few laps remaining, race leader Ryan Blaney was on his way to win the Goodyear 400 when Wallace ran into Larson. The incident occurred after Larson applied the brakes suddenly upon seeing Tyler Reddick hit the wall. Larson then spun out and hit the inside wall, bringing out the caution flags.

Hamlin’s pit crew performed an excellent job, helping him line up on the front row, while Blaney’s lead was compromised due to a delayed pit stop. While Hamlin secured his second consecutive victory, many have been trying to join the dots, suggesting that Wallace deliberately crashed into Larson to favor Hamlin. However, Gluck denied the conspiracy through his argument. He said on The Teardown podcast:

“Kyle Larson had been — I guess Larson was being told by his spotter, ‘Hey, [Reddick’s] starting to run high here, you might want to check up a little bit.’ Then, as [Reddick] gets in the wall — Larson had been trying to stay out of the way, because Larson wrecked earlier in the race.

“He’s back out there, he’s trying to stay out of the way, they’re just trying to learn some things. He sees Reddick go into the fence, and [Larson] was already starting to run high. So, Larson gets on the brakes really hard. Obviously, Bubba didn’t realize that Larson was going to check up that hard. Slows down — I mean, he can’t slow down in time. He slows down to some degree and plows into Larson, spins him out, which sets up this caution.

“Now, of course, they come on Blaney’s radio and they tell him, well, ’23 spun out the five, isn’t that convenient?’ Blaney’s like, ‘Oh, great,’ right? The teammate thing. We immediately went back and looked at the Max in-car cameras, and it seemed pretty obvious that Larson slowed up a lot. Then, Auto Racing Analytics later put the data, not the SMT Data anymore, but what used to be called the SMT Data — he posted that, and you can see clearly the brake line that Larson had there to try to check up, and Bubba just ran into the back of him.

“… It was pretty obvious though, to me. There’s plenty of — I see all the conspiracy theorists out there, but I don’t give, I honestly don’t give any credence to this at all. I think it was a completely honest mistake, coincidence, but it did ruin Blaney’s race, though, because a pit stop happens again. Denny Hamlin’s pit crew has been on it, and they win him the race, because he gets off pit road first.”

Maybe Blaney still had a chance of winning the race if it wasn’t for the error made by his pit crew, as Newsweek Sports reported.