NASCAR's Bubba Wallace vows to get a Richard Petty tattoo after Twitter wager

Never make a wager on the internet involving a tattoo unless you’re super OK with the idea that you could actually have to follow through with it.

NASCAR driver Darrell “Bubba” Wallace Jr. might be in the process of learning that lesson the hard way. Well, maybe not the hard way (because there are worse things to get a tattoo of), but he’s likely in for a lot of grief from the NASCAR world if he doesn’t make good on his retweets-for-a-tattoo gamble.

Wallace drives the iconic No. 43 Chevrolet for Richard Petty Motorsports, and Tuesday evening, Wallace tweeted a photo of The King autographing his arm, along with a wager.

People in NASCAR — from Dale Earnhardt Jr. to race tracks to the governing body’s own Twitter account — definitely took notice and tried to make 43,000 retweets happen. But Wednesday evening as the number climbed, it looked like Wallace was going to backtrack on his deal.

The problem is he initially said nothing about a specific time frame, and people had some questions about that.

By 8:30 a.m. ET on Thursday, Wallace’s original tweet hit 43,000 retweets. And it looks as though Wallace has realized he can’t back out of this one without hearing about it forever, and he reached out to a tattoo artist.

Petty — the seven-time NASCAR Cup Series champion and current team owner — has apparently been enjoying this whole situation. However, according to an email screenshot Wallace tweeted, Petty did hilariously clarify that he’s not reciprocating:

Petty “is NOT getting a tattoo of Bubba’s autograph, however, he will go with him to get the tattoo”

Wallace said, “Let’s do it!” So we’ll keep an eye out for if and when this actually happens sometime between weekly NASCAR races.