This year, NASCAR moved the Las Vegas Motor Speedway fall race weekend back a month. The reason for the move was obvious. All three years that this race weekend was held in mid-September, temperatures hovered around 100 degrees for the races. That is simply not hospitable.
NASCAR and the track also insisted upon a start time prior to noon local time, which seemed rather early. As a result, the sun was still up when many of the assembled media members finished their work and left the track, a rarity for a race in October. Sunday’s race, albeit quite competitive, will be best remembered for the wreck that took out Bubba Wallace, Kyle Larson and Christopher Bell.
Viewers were able to see this crash live. Often times, the chief sign of an intentional wreck is to look at the drivers’ hands. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a camera angle that allowed me to see Wallace’s hands clearly. If this had been a night race, it could have been different. That said, it did look suspect.
NBC’s broadcast did show Wallace get out of his car before the AMR Safety Team got to him. That, in and of itself, is a penalty in NASCAR, unless there is a fire or other immediate hazard in the car, and has been since 2014. Walking away from the safety crew is also punishable (he walked onto a hot track). The shoving probably won’t draw a penalty, but it is still a bad look. I’d say that about anyone since I’ve never really been high on the whole “Boys, have at it” thing.
Jeff Burton came forward with strong opinions here. He was unhappy with Wallace’s actions and point-blank stated that it was unacceptable. His words do have some weight, especially with everything that’s happened recently.
Later on, NBC showed a replay with telemetry from Wallace’s car that indicated that Wallace was wide open on the throttle when he crossed the track to hit Larson. That doesn’t look all that great for Wallace.
In regards to the shoving, none of NBC’s camera angles really showed how forceful the first shove was. On NBC, it looked almost like Wallace slipped while going after Larson.
A fan in the grandstands somehow had a better shot of Larson getting shoved into his quarter panel.
Well here’s our angle of it – forgive my terrible iPhone video 😅 pic.twitter.com/LTXSwozkpf
— Saskia (@Sasskatt) October 16, 2022
Note that I had to search to find the original post of this video on Twitter. As…
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