Bubba Wallace Insider Reveals Controversial NFL Figure’s Enquiry Into NASCAR’s Current Most Controversial Figure

Published 05/16/2023, 6:40 AM EDT

Because of his repeated incidents with Denny Hamlin last year, Ross Chastain had the attention of NASCAR fans. With his ‘Hail Melon’ move, he got the attention of the motorsports fans across the world. But this year, the Watermelon man seems to be widening his horizons as lately he has been attracting the attention of former footballers, something clear by what the spotter of Bubba Wallace recently revealed.

In fact, along with this revelation, one other indicator of this is Chastain’s appearance on the Pat McAfee show last week after his confrontation with Noah Gragson on the pit road at Kansas.

Bubba Wallace Insider reveals former NFL player’s enquiry about Ross Chastain

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All of this recent attention around Chastain’s on track and off track activities led former NFL player Bernard Pollard to call up Bubba Wallace’s spotter Freddie Kraft and ask if the #1 driver is actually worth all the hype he’s getting.

“Bernard Pollard sent me a text last night like, ‘Where you are at with Ross (Chastain)?’ I was like, ‘I don’t know anything about this,’” Kraft revealed in a recent episode of the Door Bumper Clear podcast.

“He was like, ‘Is he good for the sport? Do you agree with what he does?’ I was like, ‘Man, he’s great for the sport. He’s phenomenal for the sport! I don’t agree with anything he does.'”

WATCH THIS STORY: Watch: Kyle Busch’s explosive rant against Ross Chastain revised as ‘watermelon’ makes waves at Kansas.

Whether Chastain is good for NASCAR or not is not that simple a question

Wallace’s spotter continued elaborating on Pollard’s question by claiming the question itself is a “two-level question” considering the series of events in Chastain’s past week.

“Anything that gets people talking, I mean, we’ve talked about it on here like sponsors taking the sport mainstream or drivers trying to go mainstream, Ross is on the Pat McAfee show last week after that deal fighting on pit road. It doesn’t get more mainstream than the Pat McAfee show,” the spotter said.

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“So like that’s great for the sport. But then you can’t come back and do something like this.”

Kraft argued that Chastain was at a place like Darlington with one of the fastest, if not the fastest racecars on the day and still he ended up in the garage because of “a stupid move” over Kyle Larson. The spotter claimed he understands Chastain’s ‘full commit’ mindset, but in the bigger scheme of things, “it’s not gonna work.”

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“You can’t do that,” he added.

NASCAR Hall of Famer Comes to “Most-Hated” Ross Chastain’s Rescue as He Calls Out “Ridiculous” Targetting of the Watermelon Man

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Shaharyar is an experienced Senior NASCAR writer at EssentiallySports. A journalist by heart and profession, he has been at the ‘wheel’ for nearly a decade after starting with Formula 1. He has penned over 1,700 articles on the sport.

Bubba Wallace Insider Reveals Controversial NFL Figure’s Enquiry Into NASCAR’s Current Most Controversial Figure

Bubba Wallace Insider reveals former NFL player’s enquiry about Ross Chastain

Whether Chastain is good for NASCAR or not is not that simple a question

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