Breaking It Down: After a second-half season surge, Bubba Wallace finally cashes in
Wow. Who would have thought? After all the ups and downs, hopes turned into heartbreaks, and good runs that simply were not good enough, Bubba Wallace finally found victory lane this season.
Sunday’s Hollywood Casino 400 at Kansas Speedway was yet another mile-and-a-half thriller notched into the Gen 7’s belt this season, but for Wallace, the race marked the fruition of a mid-season turnaround that very few saw coming.
The Cup Series’ second leg of the round of 16 reaffirmed the phrase “expect the unexpected,” as it saw dominant cars come and go along with playoff drivers take devastating blows to their championship hopes.
Yet, even then, few could have anticipated seeing a non-playoff driver like Wallace winning for a second week in a row. Especially when considering everything that he has endured this season. Despite flashes of brilliance throughout the year, Wallace and his 23XI Racing crew seemed trapped in a sophomore slump not so long ago.
After an inspiring second-place finish in this year’s Daytona 500, everything went south for Wallace. Whether from pit crew errors, inopportune wrecks, and even lack of speed at times, the second-year team just simply could not string together a streak of strong performances to save its life.
Having had high hopes going into the season after ending last year with a celebrated win at Talladega, and incremental improvements in speed, the first half of 2022 served as a major reality check for the team. As many loyal readers may remember our Breaking It Down of Wallace’s struggles earlier in the season, the silver linings were heavily overshadowed by calls to action.
Between the loose wheels, slow pit stops, wrecks, and straight-up bad luck, the team looked like it could actually be regressing so shortly after making critical strides.
With multiple strong runs erased by the poor pit work, the turmoil reached a breaking point going into New Hampshire when the decision was made to swap pit crews with the No. 20 team of Christopher Bell. With so many naysayers watching Wallace’s every falter with a critical eye, the pressure was mounting for the 28-year-old driver to perform.
To Wallace’s credit, he rose to the occasion with flying colors. He kicked off the realignment with a third-place finish that weekend and continued to click off three more consecutive top-10s at Pocono, Indianapolis, and Michigan. His second-place finish at Michigan confirmed growing suspicions of brighter horizons as Wallace’s dejection over coming up short spoke to his belief in the team’s ability to win.
Yet, that dejection also came from a place of frustration. The season he had leading up to that point left him dependent on a win to get him into the playoffs, and without one, his strong run would go down as just another diamond buried under a rough season. That was the position that Wallace found himself in due to a slow start, but once he found momentum, he refused to look back.
Wallace continued to strive for better out of himself and his team. Even when a disappointing day like Watkins Glen (35th) cast shades of early season struggles over him, he showed up the following weekend ready to return to his positive trend.
The resilience paid off as over the past 10 weeks, Wallace (10.6) has had a higher average finish than Regular Season Champion Chase Elliott (11.6). While he can’t escape his tale of two seasons, fans are seeing a version of Wallace that they have never seen before.
Even as his momentum indicated he was progressing towards a victory at some point, it took Wallace’s best drive of his career to take home the win in Kansas this weekend. With 16 playoff drivers desperate for a win and Wallace’s traditional mediocrity at intermediate tracks, he needed to execute like never before to take home the win.
Which is precisely what he did.
Wallace carved through some of the sport's biggest names on his way to the front, capping off his tear with a power move on Alex Bowman to take the lead coming off of Turn 4. The moves he made and lap times he put down are not something fans typically see from a driver with no intermediate wins in their career. Rather, Wallace looked like a championship contender as he blazed his way through the field.
With his passes, his speed, even his burnout, fans saw Wallace at a level that many hoped he would someday reach. What makes this run so captivating is the weeks of perseverance that precede it. Just a few months ago, this season was a worst-case scenario for Wallace, but he continued to grind away at his goals.
With Sunday’s win, Wallace has completed a 180-degree turn of his season and confirmed that his talent can back up his star status in the sport.
Although the spotlight he’s attracted for much of his career has prepared him for such tribulations, Sunday’s win was not just a statement; it was a silencer. Even after his first win, many tried to discredit him for the rain-shortened nature in which he achieved it.
Yet, even that excuse is now thrown out the window as Wallace stands proudly as a two-time winner in the Cup Series. There’s nothing left for Wallace’s critics to fixate on, and he knows it. When he jumped out of his car and put a sole finger over his mouth as if to say “quiet down,” that was a message to all of those who doubted him. It was a beautiful moment, symbolic of the magnitude that this accomplishment holds.
Wallace will have to get next season off to a better start if he intends on making the playoffs, as his first year with 23XI followed a similar arc. However, for now, he may bask in the silence that he’s earned through his resilience. If even for the moment, Wallace has not known silence for far too long, and this time, it’s never sounded better.