“Playing to Win the Game”: Bubba Wallace Insider Defends His Driver Against Win vs. Points Criticism

During the race at Texas Motor Speedway last weekend, Bubba Wallace led a career-high 111 laps of the race, eventually ending up finishing the race in third place, with a good haul of points overall. However, throughout the race, there had been some questionable strategy calls that made him miss out on stage points.

During a recent Door Bumper Clear podcast episode, Wallace’s spotter, Freddie Kraft, defended why the team chose such an elaborate strategy to gun for the win, instead of focusing on the guaranteed stage points.

Bubba Wallace insider justifies Texas strategy despite criticism of losing stage points

Talking about the Texas race, Kraft said, “I have seen a lot of people questioning our decision-making in the first stage of whether or not we should have stayed out to chase 10 points versus we were. First of all, we’re playing to win the game… We thought we had a car capable of winning we did. And so those to the point of you know, we should have just took the 10 stage points.” 

Later on, spotter TJ Majors intervened and expressed that he would have easily taken the stage points since that would have guaranteed 10 points. In response, Kraft made a comment about the winner of 10 stage points, questioning whether anyone ever sees him again in front of the field. Subsequently, Majors asked who the winner was, and Kraft replied that it was Tyler Reddick, before questioning whether anyone ever saw him again.

Majors interjected, “We also drove into the fence.” Kraft countered, “…Yeah because he (Reddick) was back there in 20th…” Before Kraft could finish, Majors said, “To me, you had a better car than him as well. I mean, you say they should be the same. I mean, they are set up, you know, they’re out of the same stable…”

Freddie Kraft argues stage points should not be at the expense of a chance to win

Additionally, Kraft made a point during the discussion that it is important to focus on staying ahead rather than solely focusing on stage points, arguing that it is not wise to sacrifice the entire race just to chase stage points.

Additionally, Kraft chose to focus on staying ahead instead of just focusing on the stage point, stating, “…But I’m just saying that it’s easy to see. I don’t think you can throw away your entire race to chase stage points, because we’ve done that this year. We did it at Bristol, and it was the reason we transferred. But because we got them 10 stage or 8 stage points, whatever it was, we were never in contention for the race again.”

Kraft used another example where he mentioned how they also chased stage points at Michigan earlier in the year but ended up finishing mid-pack due to their inability to improve their track position.

Coming back to the recent Texas race, Wallace’s spotter pointed out that they earned the sixth-highest points in the race, while the person (Reddick) who won 10 stage points finished in 40th place (25th in reality). This emphasized his point that stage points should not be the sole focus, as they do not guarantee a good overall race result at the end of the day.