NASCAR 2026: Bubba Wallace spotter opens up on 'inexcusable' Martinsville wreck

Bubba Wallace's spotter Freddie Kraft has called the way the 23XI Racing star's race ended on Sunday 'inexcusable'.

Wallace was running mid-pack in the NASCAR Cup Series race at Martinsville when he got into the back of Carson Hocevar hard, triggering a multi-car wreck and ending his own day.

The wreck, which meant that the No. 23 car DNF'd for the second week in a row, resulted in a drop from third in points to 11th – in a year when points are more important than any year of Wallace's Cup career.

Hocevar had made an aggressive move to go three-wide at a restart the lap before the wreck, something Denny Hamlin later called a 'd**k move', leading to some speculation that Wallace had driven over the No. 77 in retaliation.

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Wallace spotter: We need to clean that s*** up

Kraft insisted on the Door Bumper Clear podcast this week that Wallace told him he simply misjudged the corner and the cars stacking up ahead of him, and that he has to believe his driver.

However, that didn't exactly appear to put him in a better mood about the situation, saying: "Hocevar did nothing wrong. He took us three-wide into (Turn) 1 and passed us clean. I think it was just a lapse in judgment for a moment. We need to do better, we need to be better, and if we're going to contend for top ten in points, top five in points, we need to clean that s*** up.

"And hopefully moving forward, we will. We had a conversation last night about it and we'll go from there. Everyone is saying 'You're going to make excuses for him'. There's no excuse. It's inexcusable. It's a mistake and it can't happen."

On speaking to Wallace about the reason for the wreck, he said: “There’s not really any sugarcoating about it. I got to take Bubba for his word. He said he misjudged. If he misjudged, it was a really bad misjudgment. … It hurts. We went from third in points to now, I think we’re like tied for eighth with five other guys."