Denny Hamlin explains why 23XI won't appeal Bubba Wallace penalty from Chicago incident

Denny Hamlin just revealed that 23XI Racing won’t appeal the penalty Bubba Wallace received after hitting Alex Bowman at the end of the Chicago Street Race. On the Actions Detrimental podcast, Hamlin explained why they accepted the $50,000 fine.

“Why drag this on?” Hamlin asked. “Let it go. You learn from the mistake, and it was a mistake. (Wallace) shouldn’t have done it, and you just move on.”

Wallace hit Bowman – who won the race last week – after Bowman hit Wallace earlier in the race. Bowman admitted he “ruined” Wallace’s day and said he made a big mistake.

“I ruined his day. We had a really — the restart was chaotic,” Bowman said during the post-race press conference. “I just made every wrong decision I possibly could, and I was fighting with my windshield wiper switch trying to get the thing working and I couldn’t get it working and I was focused on that, missed the corner and cleaned him out. I locked all four tires up and slid right into him. I just messed up and absolutely ruined his day.”

Bubba Wallace ready to move on after $50,000 fine

Before competing in the Pocono Race, Wallace explained why the $50,000 is a good thing for him. “I’ve been miserable for years, walking around with a persona that I’m not proud of,” Wallace told reporters. “I need to apologize to a lot of people, especially that are close to me. … Just frustrated and trying way too hard and not focused on the right things. The door slam, the bump that Bowman said wasn’t hard at all. For the people that for the last four or five years, people have been wanting me out of the sport. But those people don’t really understand that when you put – road courses, let’s talk about road courses.

“How many years have I been terrible at road courses? Seven, right? So I’ve been putting my heart and soul into getting better and spending time with the team and the sim and trying to be better. Showing up to Chicago that was our best road course race ever, and to have that wiped out in two corners when the conditions changed, over messing with switches, we all know messing with switches, you don’t mess with switches in the smallest part of the track and you have seven or eight caution laps.”

On3’s Jonathan Howard contributed to this story.