Breaking News: Bubba Wallace was SO CLOSE to ending his winless streak 
The penalties came down after a contentious final battle Sunday at the Virginia track in which Christopher Bell initially qualified for the championship final four but his move to hit the wall and use it for momentum violated a banned safety rule and was disallowed.
That gave the final spot in this week’s winner-take-all finale at Phoenix Raceway to William Byron.
Drama continued to encompass NASCAR ahead of its championship-deciding season finale as the sanctioning body issued $600,000 in fines and suspended nine team members from three different teams on Tuesday for alleged race manipulation at Martinsville Speedway.
The penalties came down after a contentious final battle Sunday at the Virginia track in which Christopher Bell initially qualified for the championship final four, but his move to hit the wall and use it for momentum violated a banned safety rule and was disallowed.
These team disruptions come in the wake of NASCAR’s disciplinary actions following allegations of race manipulation at a Martinsville event. Key figures within 23XI Racing, including competition director Dave Rogers and Bubba Wallace’s crew chief Bootie Barker, were suspended, presenting a formidable challenge for the team at an important part of the season.
Despite the absence of these colleagues, he still has confidence in the team’s ability to perform.
“I feel like we have good depth, we’ve got great people,” Reddick stated. “Personally, I wish Dave and Bootie were here for sure. But I don’t know, I think Dave does a really good job with his role, Bootie is a great leader of his team.”
Bubba Wallace was at the center of the controversy, and was found to have feigned a flat tire. This action was allegedly designed to assist his teammate, Christopher Bell. The penalties have undeniably altered their morale just ahead of what is 23XI Racing’s inaugural appearance in the Championship 4.
The Championship 4, a climactic drive featuring Ryan Blaney, Joey Logano, Tyler Reddick, and William Byron, was directly influenced by the Martinsville incident. William Byron secured his spot due to Bell’s disqualification.
Bootie’s just an awesome guy to be around, so yeah, you know, I certainly will miss him this weekend. And getting to know Dave over the years, yeah, I like having him around, too. But there’s been weekends we’ve gone to the track and Dave isn’t there.”
Reddick remains focused on the immediate challenge, drawing on Bubba Wallace’s data and displaying a positive outlook as he prepares to compete.
The 28-year-old will be enjoying some well deserved down-time after the 2024 season, and recently shared his NASCAR break plans.
“I don’t know if ‘reflect’ is really the word that comes to mind for me,” Reddick said via NASCAR.com.
“I have plenty of good notes to go back through. We all do. I think at some point we’ll review the season as a whole. But yeah, I think at moments I probably have, but not for long periods of time. I’ve just been doing other things outside of racing that’s taking up all my day.”
“Working on other things outside of racing, catching up on life, honey-do’s, whatever you want to call them,” he added.
“So yeah, once I get all that stuff in a good place, I feel like I’ll be decompressed and ready to get back just focused on racing.”
The two individuals involved are Cordell Cahill, an IT support worker from 23XI Racing, and RJ Otto, who formerly acted as the interim crew chief for Bret Holmes Racing last season but is not part of the current year’s roster. While specific details have not been disclosed, NASCAR’s policy mandates such sanctions when members fail substance checks, aiming to maintain a safe and fair competitive environment.
Reinstatement for Cahill and Otto is contingent upon completing a tailored recovery plan, a common practice that grants crew members a structured path back to the sport, assuming adherence to prescribed rehabilitation steps.
In another NASCAR league, the Craftsman Truck Series noted a minor infraction with Ross Chastain’s vehicle. A loose lug nut led to a $2,500 fine for Phil Gould, crew chief for the No. 45 Niece Motorsports truck.
However, in a more contentious issue, an incident involving drivers Corey LaJoie and Kyle Busch during the same series did not result in penalties, despite the apparent intentional nature of their collision.
Amidst these regulatory actions, NASCAR is preparing for the much-anticipated return of the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
The event marks a significant shift back to the oval track after
They weren’t merely the four best of their time, they are all in the scrum for a spot on NASCAR’s all-time podium.
Nor am I saying that the leaders of today’s Cup standings are the demigods of 1992, when Alan Kulwicki drove his Ford Thunderbird to a championship by outsmarting Bill Elliott and outlasting Davey Allison and Harry Gant.
This on a grid that also included Mark Martin, Dale Earnhardt, Rusty Wallace, Terry Labonte, Darrell Waltrip and a paddock loaded top heavy with future NASCAR Hall of Famers.
In more recent seasons, I think of 2011. A year with 18 different race winners. That’s when Tony Stewart won the title in a tiebreaker over just-inducted Hall member Carl Edwards. The rare season when Jimmie Johnson didn’t hoist the Cup included the heavyweight likes of Kevin Harvick, Matt Kenseth, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jeff Gordon and the Busch brothers. A traffic jam of talent so thick that David Ragan and Regan Smith both won races but still couldn’t crack the top 20 in points.
Those were all amazing seasons powered by amazing wheelmen, but let’s not commit the sin of allowing the nostalgia of the rearview mirror to cloud our vision and appreciation for what we are witnessing in this 4K UHD present day.
The argument for today’s roster as one of the most talented we’ve ever seen is about depth.
When Berry — the guy who not so long ago was running sim races before he was plucked out of the digital ether by Dale Jr. and dropped into the real-life short track world — pulled his No. 21 Ford into Vegas Victory Lane, the 34-year-old Tennessean was the 19th different race winner in the past 41 Cup Series races. And he did it by coming out on top of a field of 36 racers and becoming the 25th of them to win at least one Cup Series race. Yes, 25!
In NASCAR’s modern era, since 1972 when the Cup Series cut its schedule to 30-something races and fully shifted toward asphalt speedways, there have been only 14 seasons with 15 or more winners.
Four of those years came in the past four seasons. After five races this year we already have three, even after Christopher Bell gobbled up three wins in a row.
Now, I’m not naïve. I know what this Next Gen car is, and I know that it was specifically designed with parity in mind, as are in-race and in-season rules that didn’t exist in any of those other seasons I already mentioned.
All of that has undoubtedly opened doors for teams and drivers that in another era would have been left behind in a literal cloud of brake dust.
However, before anyone starts touting the glory days of the second half of this century’s first decade, including that benchmark 2011 season previously mentioned, make sure to remember that was the age of the Car of Tomorrow, a shoebox with wings that had also been conjured up as a playing-field leveler.
But the Obi-Wan Kenobi-like voice that I keep hearing as I sort through all of that is really more of chorus.
Words first spoken to me by then-teenager Austin Dillon, racing in the NASCAR Truck Series for his grandfather, Richard Childress, and catching all sorts of flak from the Raise Hell Praise Dale crowd for running the slanted No. 3 made famous by “The Intimidator.”
“Have I had opportunities because of my Pop-Pop? Yes. Are the rules different now than they were back in the day? Yes. But you know what? When the green flag drops, my granddad and those rules don’t drive the race car. I do.”
Since that conversation, he’s won seven Truck races and also added nine Xfinity wins and five Cup victories, including a Daytona 500 title.
These days, he’s not winning much of anything and is currently mired back in 32nd in the rankings with nary a top-10 finish.
And Dillon’s words have been repeated to me so many times by so many racers.
“Everything out there is working against you, whether it’s the car or changes in the car or the racetrack and changes to the racetrack or the points and changes to the points, or just all those guys out there with you who are working to beat your ass,” Earnhardt Jr. said to me late in his career.
