Alex Bowman, Bubba Wallace at Odds Once More in Chicago

By David Morgan, Associate Editor

CHICAGO – The closing laps of Sunday’s NASCAR Chicago Street Race was déjà vu for Alex Bowman and Bubba Wallace as the two once again found themselves at odds with each other.

A year after Bowman and Wallace collided in the closing laps of the Chicago Street Race as Bowman was en route to the victory, the two drivers were battling hard inside the top-10 on Sunday as the laps wound down when the racing got physical between them with Bowman’s No. 48 Chevrolet trading paint with Wallace’s No. 23 Toyota over the course of a number of corners.

Eventually something had to give and that happened when Wallace went spinning off Bowman’s bumper on Lap 70. Though Wallace escaped without any other cars getting collected, the damage had already been done as he dropped to an eventual 28^th place finish on the day, while Bowman went on to record an eighth-place result.

With Wallace in the thick of the fight to make it into the Playoffs, the end result of the day was far more detrimental to the 23XI Racing driver as he now sits just two points ahead of the cut-off line with seven races remaining in the regular season.

This battle was intense. 😳 pic.twitter.com/f3Q4aNJjlC

— NASCAR (@NASCAR) July 6, 2025

“I didn’t really expect it when I passed him and we got into [Turn] 12 and he just shipped me,” Bowman said of the on-track tussle the two had before Wallace went spinning.

“Then he ran me in the fence off of [Turn] 1, ran me in the fence off [Turn] 2 and he’s just not clear, right? Like I don’t have anywhere to go. We’re going straight and we just get hooked together and he ends up crashing.

“Yeah, I didn’t really feel it was necessary, but all-in-all a hard-fought day for our Ally 48. Killed both of us. Killed his day. We were going forward until we got all that damage. I guess the in-season tournament is more important that I expected. Yeah, one of those deals.”

To add another wrinkle to the incident, the two were matched up in the second round of the NASCAR In-Season Challenge with a berth in the next round and a continuing chance at $1 million still up for grabs for whichever of them recorded the better finish on the day.

Asked whether that played into the aggressive driving, Bowman shrugged it off as being the culprit for how everything transpired.

“I don’t know if that’s worth driving into the corner and clearing the guy out and driving him into the fence and doing all the things that happened there,” said Bowman. “In the Next Gen car, once you get hooked together, you’re stuck bouncing off each other like pinball back and forth. Hurt both of us a lot. It wasn’t on my mind at the time, but maybe, it’s hard to say what was on his mind.”

Bowman moves on to the third round of the In-Season Challenge next weekend at Sonoma, where he will be matched up with Ty Dillon, who has pulled the upset in each of his first two matchups to stay alive for the big prize as the No. 32 seed.