Bubba Wallace breaks through with Top-10 after tough week, day

LONG POND, Pa. — A week marred by a $50,000 fine and a day marred by a lack of speed ended with a top-10 finish for Bubba Wallace at Pocono Raceway.

NASCAR handed a $50,000 fine to Bubba Wallace for bumping Alex Bowman into the wall post-race in Chicago. Wallace mentioned he was racing Legend Cars with Kevin Harvick when he received the news about the fine. He said that Harvick, often the ire of NASCAR officials for his own temper, had a good talk with him that put his head in a good place.

The 23XI Racing driver needed it. Coming into the day, Bubba Wallace started 29th and was 45 points below the cutline, behind Ross Chastain and Chris Buescher. But he got a little closer after Chastain crashed out of the race on lap 54.

Wallace ran 25th at the time of the incident and was 42 points behind Chastain. Wallace told crew chief Bootie Barker that he didn’t have a car that he could be aggressive with. At Pocono, restarts fan out three, four and sometimes even five and six-wide and Sunday was no different.

Wallace neutralized the next restart, holding on to 25th. He moved up to 18th at the end of stage two as others pitted before the stage ended. When stage three began on lap 100, he jumped from 23rd to 11th. He stabilized in 16th.

The crew executed what was the final pit stop on lap 117 and moved into the top-10. Bubba Wallace survived three cautions in the next 17 laps and held off Buescher and Christopher Bell to finish 10th.

Wallace has had many races where he struggled and faltered to a poor finish. Sunday wasn’t that. He and his 23XI Racing team believed in one another and gained on the cutline, now 27 points back after capitalizing on others’ mistakes instead of succumbing to their own.

“It’s about points, so we didn’t capitalize on points. But the 1 (Ross Chastain) had a bad day, the 54 (Ty Gibbs) had a bad day. It was a nice rebound. Usually, it’s the opposite. We start really good and end up fading and giving up a lot track position. Here, we were able to call a good strategy and hang on,” Wallace said post-race.

Wallace didn’t overlook the lack of speed but also didn’t dwell on it.

“We just didn’t have the car. The 6 (Brad Keselowski) drove it down into (turn) one and I was going to race the heck out of him and I realized I was going to crash and he was going to keep going. It’s pretty eye-opening of how far we’re off. Going to have a good debrief tomorrow. All in all, I was trying to have fun the first stages, that’s what I said I was going to do. Was trying my butt off and here we are,” he said.

The Indianapolis oval, Michigan, Richmond, Daytona and Darlington are all that is left in the regular season. Bubba Wallace has had success at each track.

Indianapolis was the site of one of his best pre-23XI performances. In 2019, he wheeled the No. 43 Chevrolet Camaro to a third-place finish for Richard Petty Motorsports.

Wallace had the winning car at Michigan in 2022 before a late-race caution threw him back to second. This spring, he ran inside the Top-10 at Richmond and Darlington, and has been a perennial frontrunner on drafting tracks.

Wallace now has three Top-5 finishes and seven Top-10s in 21 races. At the same point last year, he had four Top-5s and six Top-10s.

The next race for the NASCAR Cup Series is scheduled for Sunday, July 21, at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. NASCAR will return to the iconic oval layout at the speedway for the first time since 2020.