{"id":570700,"date":"2026-03-30T12:35:34","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T12:35:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/570700\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T12:35:34","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T12:35:34","slug":"nascar-insiders-baffled-by-bubba-wallace-bulldozing-carson-hocevar-at-martinsville-you-cant-do-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/570700\/","title":{"rendered":"NASCAR insiders baffled by Bubba Wallace bulldozing Carson Hocevar at Martinsville: ‘You can’t do it’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bubba Wallace made a late-race move at Martinsville that left just about everyone scratching their head. Battling around 15th in the field, he ran over Carson Hocevar multiple times and ended up wrecking himself and a solid chunk of the NASCAR<\/a> Cup Series field.<\/p>\n

The move was extremely costly. Wallace tapped out of the race at P36. It was his second straight finish worse than 30th.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust made one of the more puzzling decisions we\u2019ve seen all year, really,\u201d The Athletic insider Jeff Gluck said on The Teardown<\/a> podcast. \u201cBecause he was having a great points season. He was third in points entering today. That move with, he just sort of bulldozes Hocevar and stays on him, wrecks himself, takes himself out of the race, ends up dropping eight spots in the points. All the way down to 11.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bubba Wallace now has a very different outlook on the season. Gluck slammed him for the move, which cost him \u201cpoints that are so valuable in this system.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was having such a solid start, and even if it wasn\u2019t going to be the great day today you\u2019ve just got to figure out how to deal with taking a 10th-place finish, taking a 15th-place finish, whatever it is,\u201d Gluck said. \u201cBecause he cost himself at least 20 points. At least.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gluck\u2019s co-host on the podcast, fellow insider for The Athletic Jordan Bianchi, noted that Bubba Wallace had been frustrated with his day well before the Hocevar incident. His team couldn\u2019t quite get the car right.<\/p>\n

On top of that, Wallace was upset with Hocevar for pushing him three-wide after a restart. Bianchi explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is me just kind of projecting a little bit, I think that probably contributed to the decision there to bulldoze Carson Hocevar,\u201d Bianchi said. \u201cYou\u2019re frustrated because Hocevar took advantage of you on a restart, that you didn\u2019t feel good about. Then you drive into him in the corner and just take him out. That\u2019s not good.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd he doesn\u2019t have a top-five finish on the year. How quickly this all changes, a few weeks ago he\u2019s sitting in second in points. You\u2019re like, \u2018Man, he\u2019s running well every week.\u2019 He just hasn\u2019t been able to kind of break through yet, but they\u2019re right there. Then boom \u2014 34th, 36th and now he\u2019s 11th in the points. No top fives and you look at this a different way and it\u2019s like, \u2018OK.’\u201d<\/p>\n

The moral of the story for both Gluck and Bianchi was simple. Bubba Wallace made a killer mistake.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t do it. You just have to look at the big picture,\u201d Bianchi said. \u201cAnd we\u2019ve heard a lot of the drivers talk about this a little bit. And it is a change in mindset. And there\u2019s people that say like not everybody quite is there yet. Or they quite realize the significance of this because nobody\u2019s raced a system quite like this before. And now they\u2019re just kind of figuring it out. It\u2019s going to be one of those things later this year where people are like, \u2018Oh. Oh, OK.’\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bubba Wallace made a late-race move at Martinsville that left just about everyone scratching their head. Battling around…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":570701,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":["post-570700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nascar","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=570700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570700\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/570701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=570700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=570700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=570700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}