A week ago, Bubba Wallace was celebrating one of the biggest wins of his career—a crown jewel victory at Indianapolis that punched his ticket into the Playoffs and lifted a planet’s worth of pressure off his shoulders.
This week? He bounced off the wall at Iowa, broke a toe link, went two laps down… and still clawed back to sixth.
Because apparently, once the pressure’s off, the real fun begins.
“I was just relaxed the whole time, really,” Wallace said after a wildly up-and-down Sunday. “It was interesting to see how things shake out.”
That might be underselling it. On lap 242, chaos broke out in front of him when Chase Briscoe got loose coming out of Turn 4 and turned Erik Jones around like a spinning top in a parking lot. Bubba had nowhere to go but into the outside wall, and it looked—for a moment—like the feel-good momentum from Indy was about to be flushed down the Iowa cornfield.
Instead, the No. 23 Toyota got patched up, straightened out, and sent back out with enough pace to rejoin the fight.
“We had an up and down day as you mentioned,” Wallace said. “I was ready to just debrief the whole car mid-race and figure out what we need to do to just wholesale it… We had our issues and just fought really hard to get our Alltroo Camry back in the top-10.”
Mission accomplished. By the end of the day, the No. 23 was back inside the top 10—and climbing.
“I felt really good firing off and I was really hesitant on how that was going to last and here we are P6 after all of that,” he said. “After the middle part of the race, if you would have told me we would finish sixth, I would have told you alright.”
And now, with a win secured and a playoff spot locked in, 23XI Racing can afford to look forward instead of inward.
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“It was interesting because I told them don’t bring this setup because it’s a little reminiscent of Richmond every time we come here,” Wallace admitted. “I ran well at the end, so there’s some things to take from there.”
He also gave his crew full marks for the repairs, calling it “a hell of a team effort.”
“I said earlier this weekend that we have to expose our weaknesses and I think we put everyone to the test today. It will be nice to see where we did fall, because I didn’t see anything there.”
From crown jewel winner to crash-survivor-turned-top-10-finisher, Bubba Wallace is showing signs of something rare in this sport: a driver getting stronger after the pressure lifts.
If this is him relaxed, the rest of the Playoff field might want to start worrying.
Greg was a writer for DriveTribe supporting Amazon's The Grand Tour and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, and a Masters degree in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek and a regular contributor to Forbes.
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