Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Homestead, fla.-it would have been easy to be frustrated, but Bubba Wallace finished in another way after his third place on Homestead-Miami Speedway.
Although he lost the lead by 33 laps, Wallace was philosophically on Pit Road afterwards.
“Kansas (in 2022) I went up and took victory, my last one,” Wallace said of his cup victory 85 racing ago. “I look at Talladega (in April 2023) … when I blocked the white and blocked (Ryan) Blaney and destroyed. Unlike that, I’ve never been to a place to give away a race. I could be pissed about it, but I’ve never been in this situation. ‘
The 2021 Cup Series champion led the last seven laps on the 1.5-mile oval.
Wallace’s season-best finish also has him in a position he has never had six races in a season. Wallace left Homestead seventh in the points on Sunday night. He has never been better than the 18th in this time of the season since he moved to Cup full time in 2018.
“One of our big goals was only through five races without having a shortage of points, without putting ourselves in a position where we have to change the way we want to work weekly,” said crew head Charles Denike, who joined the team before the season.
Wallace had to scramble in recent years because of his slow start. He only made the playoffs once and did not climb that place in the regular season in Daytona in 2023.
This is how a sleepless night led to the search for the new crew head of Bubba Wallace.
While there are 20 races in the ordinary season, Wallace’s car has shown the velocity to expect him to make the play -offs this year. He is one of the two drivers in the top seven in points that were not in the top -10 at this time last year. The other is Alex Bowman, who passed Wallace for the lead on Sunday to give it up with seven laps to go to Kyle Larson.
“I got confused and Bowman did in the same way as me and gave it to (Larson),” Wallace said.
However, Wallace was able to work together in a funny way after the race with Bowman.
“I then walked to Bowman and said,” We both suck, “Wallace said, laughing as he told the moment. “That’s what it is. All on a good day. ‘
This is the second win on the 1.5 mile oval for the Hendrick Motorsports star.
One of the keys for Wallace this season was stage points. Wallace scored six on Sunday and gave him 61 stage points from his 166 total points. This is 36.7% of its total points that come from the stage points.
Those stage points were valuable because a brake failure led to a 29th place in Phoenix, and he was collected in an accident in Las Vegas, which led to a 28th place.
Denike noted that the team did not deliberately go for stage points, except at Circuit of the Americas. There, Denike Wallace held out while others planned and Wallace won the first phase.
The point is that Wallace earns those stage points based on the performance of the car instead of strategy.
The fact that Wallace was strong on Homestead all day – he was second in the average position at 5.9 – helped to facilitate any frustration by not winning.
“We know we can do this,” says Wallace, who led 56 rounds on Sunday. ‘… today we had to fight for it. We just fired OK. I said, ‘Hey, I want clean air. I want a good track position ‘and my pit staff is solid. They got us up there, gave me a good chance and had a good restart. Then it was a game from there. So just a good weekend here. “
