Kyle Larson Candidly Admits to Retaliating Against Bubba Wallace at Clash

NASCAR officially kicked off the 2024 Cup Series campaign a day early, running the exhibition Clash at the Coliseum on February 3 to beat the forecasted historic flooding expected in the LA area. While Denny Hamlin won and claimed the gold medal, after the race, fans and media focused on several driver conflicts that developed during the 150-lap feature event, including one on the final lap when Kyle Larson spun Bubba Wallace.

The 2021 champion visited with Lee Spencer on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio during his post-race interview and offered a candid response when asked how he and the 23XI Racing driver seem to regularly find each other as they did on the quarter-mile track.

“It was just another one,” Larson said. “Listen, I got hit three different times by him and it was the last lap and I was going to get my hit in finally. I wasn’t trying to spin him or anything, but just shove him through the corner like he was shoving me through the corner.

“If roles were reversed, I would have expected the same thing that he got. I hope he understands that. Yeah, we’ve had our run-ins before and I haven’t talked to him and who knows if there’s even anything to talk about.”

Bubba Wallace has been on the wrong end of aggressive driving at the Clash in the past. Last year, Austin Dillon spun him late and the 30-year-old driver showed his displeasure by driving down and squeezing the No. 3 car into the inside wall on its next trip around the short track.

The 2024 edition continued that same unfortunate trend for Wallace, who found his car pointed in the wrong direction on Lap 78, just after the restart to the second half of the race, when Alex Bowman started a chain reaction going into Turn 3 and drove into the rear of the No. 45 car, which sent Tyler Reddick into the rear of his 23XI Racing teammate