NASCAR insider assesses fine line between Bubba Wallace fine, Corey LaJoie-Kyle Busch situation

A NASCAR insider has weighed in on if the organization made the right call on the Bubba Wallace fine and the wreck between Corey LaJoie and Kyle Busch. Bob Pockrass of Fox Sports first shared his thoughts on Wallace being finished $50,000 for hitting Alex Bowman at the end of the Chicago Street Race.

“Wallace car owner Denny Hamlin believes optics were the reason for the fine in the first place — that because Wallace did it with the cameras focused on him, NASCAR had to react,” Pockrass wrote. “I’d think any social media uproar might make NASCAR do more analysis of a situation to see if it is more noise than fact, but whether it dictated the penalty in this situation, I’m skeptical.”

While Wallace was fined $50,000 for his hit on Bowman, LaJoie was not punished by NASCAR for spinning Busch and ending his day at Pocono. Pockrass feels NASCAR made the right call on LaJoie because he believes the wreck was not intentional.

“He made a very questionable move and probably should have lifted,” Pockrass wrote. “But it wasn’t like LaJoie shipped Busch on purpose in retaliation. If a driver frequently makes mistakes that cause big wrecks, NASCAR can address that through its racing approval process.

“But drivers shouldn’t be worried about making a mistake or deciding whether to lift if they are being blocked or racing for position — the ‘penalty’ in those situations often is the crash that results (albeit in LaJoie’s situation he was able to continue) or the way the driver on the receiving end races the aggressor in the future.”

Bubba Wallace shares thoughts on penalty

$50,000 is a lot a money for a fine, but Wallace believes the punishment is good for him. “Penalty was probably the best thing that’s happened to me,” Wallace told reporters last weekend. “I’ve been miserable for years, walking around with a persona that I’m not proud of. 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,”