The battle that began a year ago has been rekindled. NASCAR’s Chicago Street Race kicked off with much attention on defending winner Alex Bowman. But while he was expected to fight road course ace Shane van Gisbergen to defend his crown, Bowman ended up facing an old foe. Yes, you guessed it right, that foe is Bubba Wallace.

The 23XI Racing driver wreaked havoc along with his Hendrick Motorsports rival last year. This year, they crossed paths yet again, as Alex Bowman explained the latest fiasco.

Alex Bowman breaks down new beef with Bubba Wallace

Well, last year, it was way more chaotic. During the 2024 Grant Park 165, Alex Bowman spun out Wallace on lap 25, spurring a boiling need for revenge in the latter. After Bowman won the race, Wallace door-slammed the No. 48 Chevrolet during the cooldown lap, incurring a hefty $50,000 penalty. A year later, the Toyota driver was already in a bad mood because of another HMS driver. After getting clipped by Kyle Larson on lap 25, Wallace dropped from P16 to P32. Yet the 23XI driver persevered and worked his way up to 18th by the end of Stage 2. Then, however, his round 2 with Bowman was coming up.

Within the last 20 laps, their bumpers made contact. Bowman and Wallace were fighting tooth and nail to maintain their position, with Wallace’s teammate Tyler Reddick breathing down their necks. The two bumped multiple times, and it culminated in Bubba Wallace spinning off the bumper of Alex Bowman down a straightaway.

Although Bowman finished 8th, the HMS driver looked frustrated in a post-race interview: “I thought we had squashed our beef, but clearly we did not…I followed the 45 [Tyler Reddick] past him, ran me into an inside wall at 8, still felt like passed them clean. And he absolutely just demolished me into [Turn] 12, I gave it back a little bit into [Turn] 1. Then again, he ran me into an outside wall, and I’m just a pinball between him and the outside wall at that point.” He lamented about the repetition of their battle: “I don’t know if it was one of those situations where we both got pinballed off each other, caused the whole thing, and just looked like a bunch of idiots.”

Bubba Wallace, on the other hand, finished a disappointing 28th in the race. He interacted with Alex Bowman post-race, and the exchange seemed less heated than expected. Bowman continued, “I felt like he kind of did it for himself because yeah, it wasn’t the intention… we had way fresher tires than him. I get the In-Season Tournament means a lot… So I don’t know if that’s what it was about or what. But unfortunately, that happened. It tore up our car a bunch and obviously killed his day.”

Clearly, Alex Bowman and Bubba Wallace could not avoid round 2 of their Chicago battle. Let us wait and see what unfolds after their recent scuffle.