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Bubba Wallace’s Spotter Freddie Kraft Reveals How They “Royally Screwed Up” in Charlotte

Published 06/04/2022, 5:55 AM EDT

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Yet another race, yet another mistake by the 23XI Racing team that led to yet another poor result for Bubba Wallace. It’s a shame that for so many races this season, the #23 driver has been let down by his pit wall, the most recent example of which came in Charlotte.

During the Coca-Cola 600, Wallace’s team made a pretty big mistake of not conveying the information that caused some severe and direct consequences for his race result.

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This was something that Freddie Kraft, Wallace’s spotter, also addressed in a recent episode of the Door Bumper Clear podcast.

“We just continue to figure out ways to f**k up over this year, apparently. Listen, I said here a couple of weeks ago, the number one job is to know the rules and we just overlooked a pretty big one,” Kraft said.

“For some reason, NASCAR said, all cars have made minimum speed at lap 199. And then at lap 200 they said, the #23 is not maintaining the speed,” he continued.

The rule is you got three laps with minimum speed to clear it, and we didn’t. We were kind of going the long game and saving tyres and we f****d up, pretty bad.”

“We royally, royally screwed up.”

Team Owner Denny Hamlin also admitted how they’ve let down Bubba Wallace

After yet another disastrous race in Kansas earlier this season, 23XI Racing co-owner Denny Hamlin had addressed the recurring issues for one reason or the other that were ruining Bubba Wallace’s race results.

The Joe Gibbs Racing driver acknowledged how Wallace has all the right to be “frustrated.”

“I couldn’t pass the #23. He was really, really fast, I mean extremely fast. The results don’t show it, but like I said, as a team, we’re letting him down right now,” the Joe Gibbs Racing driver said in an interview.

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USA Today via Reuters

When asked what could be done to fix the situation, Denny Hamlin hinted that the issues will be dealt with “internally”.

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“We gotta work through some issues on pit road certainly,” he emphasized.

“I think we have to figure out how to manage races.”

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Written by:

Shaharyar Khan Chauhan

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Shaharyar is an F1 & NASCAR writer at EssentiallySports. A graduate in Journalism from Amity University, he has been a passionate follower of motorsports for a better part of the decade. A Max Verstappen and Ferrari supporter, he dreams of a pairing of the two in future.
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Edited by:

Ranvijay Singh