Chase Elliott addresses Daniel Suarez incident, disagrees with NASCAR penalizing Bubba Wallace

Following a weekend at Chicago that drew a significant $50,000 fine for Bubba Wallace for slamming into the door of Alex Bowman in a cool-down lap after the race, Chase Elliott was relieved to find his own name not on the disciplinary list after a brief back-and-forth with Daniel Suarez.

Neither of the two made hard contact intentionally after some unintentional dust-ups on the track, perhaps what spared Elliott of a fine.

But the driver of the No. 9 car was never particularly worried.

“I honestly didn’t really think about it, because we barely rubbed doors,” Elliott said, according to FOX Sports’ Bob Pockrass. “At the very best that was all the contact that we made. I haven’t studied Bubba’s situation in great detail, but I personally view it from what I have seen quite a bit differently, in my opinion.”

Wallace jarred Bowman, who was in the middle of wiping his brow during the cool-down lap when he got doored. Even then, Elliott didn’t necessarily see enough to merit the $50,000 fine NASCAR handed down to Wallace.

“I don’t really think he should have been fined. I understand,” Chase Elliott said. “I get it, but man you’re getting in the weeds with some of that stuff. Nobody was hurt and it was unfortunate, I guess, just the circumstances and Alex having won the race and things of that nature. But I didn’t see it to be a huge deal.”

As for his own back and forth with Suarez, neither driver seemed worse for the wear. Suarez did question NASCAR’s inconsistency in applying the code of conduct rule, but even he said he didn’t think Elliott should have been fined for the incident.

The two were a victim of a tightly packed field and wet conditions.

And while that made for frustrating contact for Elliott late, it wasn’t enough to produce penalties for any retaliation Elliott might have attempted.

“He and I talked after the race and I understood, it was difficult conditions for sure,” Chase Elliott said. “Obviously hated that, I mean our day was, I ruined our day by struggling so bad on that last set of wets. So really at the end of the day it’s nobody’s fault but my own is kind of how I view situations like that. I put us in a bad spot.

“Unfortunate that that happened in the last turn of the last lap to lose some spots. But I genuinely don’t think he meant to turn me around. I had gotten into him in the previous corner, the 6 (car of Brad Keselowski) kind of had us stacked up, and I was expecting him to jump to the bottom and he didn’t. So we talked about all that and I feel like we both understood and it was really all good.”