Last year featured the first time that Bubba Wallace had raced for a championship, even if it wasn’t for the championship and he learned a great deal from the experience.
23XI Racing moved Wallace into the owner’s championship eligible No. 45 for the final 10 races as a result of Kurt Busch missing the second half due to a potentially career-ending concussion. He looked every bit like a championship caliber driver despite missing the playoffs in the No. 23 car.
Wallace won at Kansas on Sept. 11, the highlight of the final stretch, but was also suspended a race for intentionally crashing Kyle Larson at Las Vegas. It was an entire season’s worth of growth and development, and he recognizes that the highs and lows makes this year the most important campaign of his career.
Hamlin certainly thinks so.
“I can use my own experiences on and off the track to sympathize with him,” Hamlin said. “I’ve made some big mistakes as well. Each one of them, I’ve learned from and I think it’s no different with him.
“He learned from that, he understands where he draws a line and where we draw a line as a race team. Even though he crossed it in that moment, I think he will be better from that life experience.”
So is this a make-or-break season as far as Wallace is concerned?
“Yeah, I don’t take that as harsh at all,” Wallace said. “I put enough pressure on myself to fully respect that question and I think this is the most excited I’ve ever been to start a season.”
Wallace now has two career victories, at Talladega in 2021 and Kansas in 2022, but both came during the playoffs in a season in which he wasn’t amongst the Field of 16 entering the final 10 races. For Wallace to consider this season a success, he believes he has to make the playoffs and make some degree of impact once in it.
“I think that we have to win at the right time,” Wallace said. “We have to win before the playoffs. One win, five wins, whatever it is between that, just have to do it at the right time and then you set yourself up for the postseason.
“As long as you can carry that momentum into the postseason, we should be okay. Let’s get one and then we can talk about multiple.”
That one could very well come by Sunday night in the Daytona 500, with Wallace having two runner-up finishes, including last year. His team owner, Denny Hamlin, believes Wallace is amongst the best superspeedway racers in the discipline right now…
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