Kevin Harvick likes emotion, but expresses disappointment in Bubba Wallace for Alex Bowman incident

Kevin Harvick and the Harvick’s Happy Hour crew had a ton of talking points to get through after NASCAR’s trip to Chicago over the weekend, including the post-race incident involving race-winner Alex Bowman, and 23XI Racing wheelman Bubba Wallace.

Following Bowman’s victory, Wallace showed his displeasure with the Hendrick Motorsports star, bumping him while their window-nets were down on the cool-down lap. That’s something that received immense backlash from the NASCAR community, and Harvick, along with his cohost Mamba Smith, gave their opinions on the matter.

“He’s been open about not being a great road racer, but he’s getting better at it,” Smith explained, regarding Wallace. “He’s running right with the No. 48, so he would’ve been in that mix, and they tangle up early on, and I think, when the No. 99 hit them in the right front, I think it damaged their suspension, and that was the end of the his day, and then they kind of got into it after the race. … Alex Bowman was like, ‘He should be mad. I wrecked him. I didn’t do it on purpose,’ but he still wrecked him.

“People were going crazy about it. I’m like, I don’t know. These guys are athletes. They’re going to, you know.”

While Bowman understood Wallace’s frustration, and Harvick enjoyed the showcase of emotion from Wallace, the former Cup Series champion didn’t agree with the way the No. 23 driver handled his frustration after the checkered flag.

“We saw a few of those after the race. … I think the you look at that scenario, it sounded like Alex was reaching for his windshield wiper switch, is what he said. It sounded like he was trying to do something else, and ran into the back of Bubba,” Harvick added, regarding the initial contact between the two. “But you know, the after the stuff race, you want to see the excitement and stuff, but I mean, his window-net was down. Both window-nets were down, and I think Alex was not really expecting what happened, so I don’t like that.

“I love to see the emotion out of the guys, but you hate to see those scenarios, where they have their window-nets down. But it was a physical race.”

Time will tell if there’s any lingering bad blood between Alex Bowman and Bubba Wallace, but it’s evident Kevin Harvick would like to see any issues handled in a different manner moving forward. Bumping someone while the window-net is down is a no-no for Harvick, but we’ll see if his advice gets through.