Freddie Kraft hilariously recalls wanting to 'smack the s***' out of Bubba Wallace at Darlington

Bubba Wallace had a good run in Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series playoff opener at Darlington Raceway. Wallace spent the entire night running up front, leading 10 laps and finishing sixth.

There were two times, however, where his spotter, Freddie Kraft, “wanted to smack the shit out of him.” Kraft explained during Monday’s “Door Bumper Clear” podcast.

“There was twice yesterday I really wanted to smack the shit out of him,” Kraft said. “I said something about what’s going on around us, like pace wise and who’s running where and what not. He says, ‘I’m good. I’m just riding here.’ Literally goes in [Turns] 1 and 2 the next corner and f*cking smokes the wall. I’m like, ‘OK, great. Perfect.’

“And then another time, John Hunter [Nemechek] was bonziing the bottom just trying to get to our left rear quarter, and I said, ’42 is just bonziing. He’s getting about half back of the center.’ He says, ‘I’m not worried about him,’ and I said, ‘Inside off of 2.'”

Wallace stayed out of trouble, picked up stage points and ended the night +25 above the cutline. Kraft thought they executed well, save for a couple of moments.

“I think we had fourth-best points,” Kraft said. “We talked about if you can just have a clean day, get stage points in both stages and now I think we’re +25 over the cutline. That’s put us in a good spot moving forward. Obviously, you can’t have any issues. You still got to do the same thing.

“We were talking about Bubba’s been saying just base hits gets us through this round, so we don’t need any home runs. … It was a really good night. We executed really well.”

Bubba Wallace executed well at Darlington

Wallace will turn his attention to next Sunday’s race at Gateway. Other playoff drivers had miserable outings at Darlington; fortunately for Wallace, he wasn’t one of them.

“I was doing my best not to overdrive the corners the last couple of laps. Good day for our team,” Wallace said after the race. “Great playoff run and just solid execution. We had a couple of mistakes on pit road, I had a couple of mistakes on the track, and we were able to rebound really well. Hats off to Toyota. I was really happy with the car to start. Obviously drove up there to the lead. When we got back in traffic, I just didn’t do a good job of relaying the right info.

“Midway through the race, I was having a conversation with myself that I was giving the wrong info, just needed to regroup. We were so far down chasing one side of the balance. All in all, we didn’t oversail it. Hit base hits all day. I was counting down the laps one by one. Limit the mistakes. I seen a lot of people had bad days. I didn’t want to add to that factor. It’s what it’s all about, is just keeping the aggression levels in check, keeping the big picture in check, enjoying the moment. Here we are top six at Darlington.”