With the regular season coming to an end with only seven more races remaining, the heat is building up among drivers to punch their tickets to playoffs. While Shane van Gisbergen won the race and scripted history in Chicago, it was Alex Bowman and Bubba Wallace who made the headlines. Now these two drivers have had a feud since 2019, which came to the surface last year when Wallace doored the HMS driver after he won the race on a cool-down lap. And more sparks flew last Sunday, which might have cost the two drivers a playoffs spot.

Not just the playoffs, both Bowman and Wallace were pitted against each other for the In-Season challenge when they are trading paint for a top 10 spot. On Lap 70, the #23 car made a move on the inside lane, which was being defended by the HMS driver. And after a fierce battle, Bowman retaliated and spun the 23XI Racing driver on the track. Everyone expected drama and a possible altercation after the race, but the two drivers had a chat and were in agreement that it was hard racing. Bowman finished the race with a top 10 result, but Wallace had little to gain from his hard battle.

In the grand scheme of things, Bubba Wallace now finds himself right on the bubble with a two-point cushion. One bad race and he would be playing catch-up, and this has sort of become a regular theme for him in the past few seasons. Meanwhile, Bowman, with a 39-point buffer, isn’t exactly in the clear, with drivers like Ryan Preece and Michael McDowell starting to contest for those spots. So, who exactly won in the battle of the egos in Chicago? Well, going by Kevin Harvick’s assessment, both drivers gained very little in trying to settle their score.

“It was rough, and ultimately it wound up taking Bubba out of the race… Both of these guys are in a unique position. Bubba more so than Alex from points standpoints. So, not what he needed from points piece of it but definetly pretty intense,” Harvick said on his podcast, Happy Hour. His co-host, Mamba Smith, talked about how he appreciated the display of hard racing, but Harvick once again came back to the point about the bigger picture. Winless and banking on points, both Bowman and Wallace could’ve done without the intense bumper-to-bumper racing.

“We wanna see it but it could’ve been prevented. I think that the big picture, points piece of it is super important at this point. Because both of those guys in my opinion are the verge of being out. Preece is out running them both currently and making up ground pretty quick. I think Allmendinger was in the mix, McDowell was kinda in the mix in the beginning before he had his issues. Going to another road course, we still have to go to Daytona. I don’t know, both of those guys are in an uncomfortable position,” Harvick explained further.

Harvick isn’t wrong in making this prediction. Ryan Preece is slowly making ground and working his way up the points under the radar. Five top 10s in the last eight starts, RFK Racing’s newest recruit has the momentum, and he is ensuring that he doesn’t get caught up in other people’s mess. And before SVG took command of the race, it was Michael McDowell who led the entirety of stage 1 and beat the Kiwi drivers to the first corner. Next up is the race in the Wine Country and that is a good spot for the Spire Motorsports driver, along with others looking to close the gap in terms of points.

While Harvick was only explaining the tough scenario for Bubba Wallace, Denny Hamlin didn’t mince words about his driver’s antics in Chicago.

Denny Hamlin feels that Bubba Wallace might regret his tussle with Bowman

Hamlin knows from experience that Alex Bowman, on fresher tires, was always going to have an edge over Wallace. Even if he took the lead, the HMS driver would get by him. We saw Hamlin make way for Tyler Reddick, not because he races for 23XI Racing, but because he had fresh Goodyear rubber. And while there was an argument to be made that he was eyeing that million-dollar price with the In-Season battle, the JGR veteran laid it bare, “Do you want to be the playoffs or not? And so you can’t really caught up 20 spots with six laps to go.”

The point Hamlin was trying to make was that Bubba Wallace wasn’t going to gain a massive advantage or disadvantage battling for that eighth spot. He would’ve liked his driver to settle for a decent finish over a 28th-place result, which only adds to his woes. “Our cars are fast, just gotta figure out how to finish where you’re capable of finishing. And whatever that number is, you gotta live with it, can’t make it worse.”

If the final few spots for the playoffs are decided on points, Bubba Wallace and his team will be looking at the Chicago race, where they just couldn’t close the deal and take what they had on the day.