NASCAR insider defends Bubba Wallace 'honest mistake' with Kyle Larson at Darlington

It looked like Ryan Blaney had the Goodyear 400 won during the final laps at Darlington Raceway. Then, Kyle Larson spun-out, and a late caution changed the game for the former NASCAR Cup Series champion, who was seeking his first win of 2025.

Denny Hamlin’s pit crew excelled on their final stop, gifting the No. 11 wheelman the lead and subsequently the win in South Carolina. The Team Penske driver tried to make sense of the situation with Larson that ended up costing him the win — the Hendrick Motorsports star was seemingly turned by Blaney’s friend Bubba Wallace, but there was more than met the eye.

“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,” Jeff Gluck stated, via The Teardown. “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.”

As you can tell, Gluck doesn’t believe Wallace meant to rain on Blaney’s parade, and it’s easy to see why. There was no collusion going on, even if Blaney might’ve thought so during the heat of the moment. Still, that won’t give the No. 12 team their win back.

One thing is for sure, it worked out for Denny Hamlin in the end. He went as far as to thank Kyle Larson during his post-race interview. The wins will come for Ryan Blaney moving forward, it just wasn’t meant to be at Darlington on Sunday.