Was Bubba Wallace the Biggest Loser After NASCAR’s Atlanta Race?

With just seven races to go in the NASCAR Cup Series regular season, the race for the playoffs is getting heated. This is also usually that time of the year when the winless drivers look up the points table to make sure they are above the cut-off line, all the while looking over their shoulders at other winless drivers. 23XI Racing’s Bubba Wallace is also in that tough spot.

Wallace is 17th in the points table, just three points below the top 16, a place where he was sitting just a couple of weeks ago. Naturally, the dismal finish in Atlanta did not help Bubba’s case.

Why Bubba Wallace is in a tough spot after Atlanta

When talking about the biggest loser after Sunday’s Atlanta race, NBC’s Marty Snider brought up the No. 23 driver. Snider said, “Yeah I’m gonna go with Bubba Wallace. I mean it wasn’t a few weeks ago that they were not comfortable in, but they had a pretty good margin on the cut line and now they have fallen below the cut line. Now lost 18 points, now 3 below the cut line. New Hampshire this weekend, very good track for Bubba Wallace. So we’ll see what he can do there. He ran very well there, very good there last year.”

Of course, last year Wallace finished third at New Hampshire. What will also give him confidence is that three of the four races after New Hampshire are in Indiana, Michigan, and Pocono, where he finished 5th, 2nd, and 8th last year. A sequence of finishes close to this will certainly help a long way to save Wallace’s season.

Alex Bowman has failed to deliver after return from injury

Another driver who has really struggled this season is Hendrick Motorsports’ Alex Bowman. After missing a few races because of an injury, Bowman has not been able to find his feet and is in danger of missing the playoffs entirely. As NBC Sports’ Dustin Long put it, “I look at Alex Bowman and just you know, he’s just continually.. the struggle, you know they have not been able to put together the finishes, does not get the results.”

“Sunday night, falls further in the points from 20th to 22nd, loses more points on the cut-off, and again, this is a Hendrick Motorsports car, this is a car you expect to run well, it was running well early in the season and now just in the last 6 races haven’t finished better than 12th and they’re losing all these points. He’s fallen from 16th to 22nd in that time period.”

While much of the spotlight has been on teammate Chase Elliott, Bowman’s poor run of results has been more shocking, considering how impressive he was at the start of the season.