Bubba Wallace is recovering from a terrifying moment this weekend when a collision with driver Alex Bowman sent his car bouncing off a wall and back onto the track during lap 77 of the Bank of America 400 in Charlotte, North Carolina.
“No warning,” Wallace, 33, told reporters after the race on Sunday, October 11. “I saw it in the last second. The 48 [Bowman] came up and clipped us. No hard feelings, it’s just racing. It’s loose down there.”
Wallace continued, “Him and I don’t want to give up spots [and] he wants to get by me. But for pit road sake, to keep our day smooth, we want to stay in front of him. But he just got loose and, to be honest, the first hit wiped our brakes out. And so on the second hit, it got me good. But we’re good. We’ve still got nine fingers and nine toes, so we’re fine.”
“I’m starting to fall a little bit, but still a lot of opportunity in front of us, and unfortunately Alex got loose and we were just a byproduct,” Wallace added. “Unfortunate. No hard feelings.”
After the collision, Wallace stayed in his car for a moment before emergency staff helped him out. He was able to walk to a waiting ambulance, eschewing the stretcher that had been brought out for him.
Wallace was transported to a local medical center for evaluation. His team, 23XI Racing, confirmed he had been “released” on Sunday.
Bowman, 33, was uninjured in the crash and, similarly to Wallace, was not able to complete the race. William Byron, who was coming up behind the two when the collision occurred, also sustained damage to his vehicle but was unhurt.
Bowman told the media later that he took responsibility for the collision.
“Yeah, it just got loose,” he said. “I honestly have been really tight and I don’t know, as soon as it got to the exit of the corner, it snapped and kind of didn’t stand a chance. Unfortunately, [I] grabbed too much wheel and over corrected into those two guys. I hate that for our Ally 48 team. Obviously, we had a pretty fast car. I also hate that for the 23 [Wallace] and 24 [Byron] cars, like just, it’s fine to get loose and crash, but to ruin their days too really sucks.”
Bowman continued, “It’s on me. I just didn’t hang on to it well enough and just [was] caught off-guard. I don’t know why I got as loose as I did. I hadn’t been loose at all but it’s part of driving race cars and unfortunately I didn’t do a good enough job of it.”
The Bank of America 400 was Wallace’s first DNF (Did Not Finish) of the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series Chase. Chase Briscoe ultimately won the race, beating Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Christopher Bell by 0.029 seconds.
