Despite finishing fifth on Sunday in the Snowball Derby, Bubba Pollard believes he had a car capable of so much more, and would have contended if not for a run-in with laps-down rookie Caleb Adrian.
Pollard found himself on a different tire strategy than most of the leaders and was saving a set of tires for a late caution. He was running third with 60 laps to go when he came across Adrian, who was running outside the top-15 and multiple laps off the pace.
Making his first start at Five Flags Speedway, Adrian drifted up when Pollard went high to pass and then went low a lap later when Pollard responded that direction as well.
As a result, Pollard got trapped on the high side when the rest of the leaders got under him, dropping him from third to 11th before a competition caution saved him from dropping off the lead lap.
Even though Pollard battled his way to sixth and gained another spot due to the Christopher Bell disqualification, the 2014 Southern Super Series champion made it clear his conviction that Adrian cost him a shot at the Tom Dawson Memorial Trophy.
“I just think he’s in the damn way,” Pollard said of Adrian. “Point blank. He’s in the way. Were racing in the front, just trying to hang on and people like that have no respect for nobody. That’s why they’ll never do anything.
“Max Papis said it good in the drivers meeting. It’s about respect and that dude has zero amount of respect.”
For his part, Adrian said he didn’t realize there was a problem.
“Nah, I didn’t know anything,” Adrian said. “I hadn’t heard anything. If they are pissed, they need to come to me. I didn’t even know they were mad.”
A crew member from each team were involved in a shouting contest during the race itself, following the on-track encounter but it was quickly broken up by the noise and the competition caution.
Even despite the frustration, Pollard was laughing with his crew after the race, pleased with his overall speed and a clean race car following the conclusion of the 300-lap event. He just wishes his strategy would have had the chance to work itself out.
“We had a lot better race car than where we finished,” Pollard said. “We were running third on older tires in that late run. We’ve got a brand new set of tires right here leftover that I tried to save for the end.
“But I never would have dreamed we would have had that many long runs. We saved that last set of tires for the late caution that never came.”
