Bubba Wallace watched a potential victory turn into a nightmare in seconds. During the final lap of last Sunday’s Quaker State 400 at Atlanta, the 23XI Racing driver battled Spire Motorsports’ Carson Hocevar and Team Penske’s Ryan Blaney for the win. In the chaos, Wallace dropped below the track’s double-yellow line. NASCAR handed down a brutal penalty that sparked intense debate across the sport.
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Many people, including Wallace’s own team owner, Denny Hamlin, agreed with the decision. They pointed to the strict rulebook. However, former NASCAR drivers Kenny Wallace and Rick Mast argued the penalty was overly harsh and completely unjust.
On Schrader and Herm, Kenny Wallace opined that Bubba had no choice but to drop below the line. He said on the podcast, “He [Bubba] was trying to save the car, went below the yellow line, and did not pass the car in front of him. Eventually, he did.”
Kenny Wallace knows exactly how this feels. Over his 344-race Cup Series career, he experienced the same heartbreak. In 2002 at Talladega Superspeedway, NASCAR penalized him for dipping below the yellow line. Before breaking down why Bubba deserved a break, Kenny asked Mast for his take.
“Yeah, it’s a black-and-white rulebook,” Mast said. “If you gain a position by going below the yellow line, you get penalized. [But] I wonder if NASCAR even noticed it. That was my first impression when they said, ‘Oh, he went below the yellow line. He might get a penalty.’ I was like, if you guys hadn’t said that on television, with so much going on, NASCAR might not even have noticed it.”
Bubba had crossed the finish line in second place behind Blaney. After the race, he was immediately dropped to 29th. He repeatedly insisted that he gained no advantage. He entered Turn 3 in third place and remained there through the corner, only moving into second a few meters from the finish line.
“I don’t agree with the penalty, and here’s why. When he goes below the yellow line, he’s not gaining a position. They said if you pass below the yellow line, you get penalized, but I don’t understand it,” Kenny Wallace added.
However, Bubba did not receive the full backing of his own team in his appeal to have the penalty overturned. Denny Hamlin, like Kenny Wallace, admitted that Bubba didn’t really have many options to avoid dropping below the double-yellow line. But unlike Kenny and Rick, the 23XI Racing co-owner, alongside NBA legend Michael Jordan, believes that rules are simply rules.
NASCAR’s rulebook states, “If NASCAR determines that a vehicle goes beneath the double-painted lines to improve its position, it will be black-flagged.”
Hamlin, on his Actions Detrimental podcast, stated that Wallace was the furthest ahead through Turns 3 and 4 on the final lap. So, even though the scoring charts didn’t show an advantage, he believed Wallace had “technically gained” the lead at one point.
It was a massive blow to Bubba, who dropped down to 13th in the standings after the 27-point swing. His comfortable 83-point cushion over the cutoff line suddenly shrank to just 55 points.