Bubba Wallace couldn’t get out of Pocono Raceway fast enough on Sunday. When the race began, Wallace was 10th in the NASCAR Cup standings, hoping to move up in the standings. Then disaster struck.
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Instead of going up, Wallace went down to 12th in the points due to a brake rotor failure and subsequent right front tire failure, all on Lap 56, leading to a loss of control that wrecked his car. End of his day, period.
And suddenly, his playoff assurance now appears questionable at best. Wallace has not won a race this season and yes, while he’s technically 12th in the standings, he’s actually 15th in playoff eligibility. How you ask?
Austin Cindric (15th in the Cup standings), Josh Berry (16th) and Shane van Gisbergen (31st) all have one win, putting them above the playoff cutline. Since 11 drivers have won at least one race, the first five drivers that remain winless are, in order, Chase Elliott, Tyler Reddick, Chris Buescher, Wallace and Alex Bowman.
So with nine races now remaining, Wallace is just nine points ahead of Bowman. Or to put it another way, he is just 10 points out of missing the playoffs.
Needless to say, Wallace is very disappointed at how Sunday turned out and how his playoff hopes are in jeopardy. First of all, it started off in a bad way as Wallace was forced to start from the back of the field due to unapproved adjustments due to a mechanical failure in qualifying.
To make matters worse, he had a decent cushion in the overall point standings, with a 57-point margin above the cutline. But with his 36th-place finish (in the 37-car field) on Sunday, Wallace is now only nine points above the cutline.
What happened? Wallace is as mystified as anyone
Bubba Wallace had no warning about what happened. “Nothing,” he said after the race with an understandable dejected look on his face. “I was going to battle the 17 (Chris Buescher) and the 2 (Austin Cindric) and by the time I was ready to touch the pedal it just went to the floor and the brakes exploded.
“I hate it, we’ve had two or three good races in a row (sixth at Nashville, fourth at Michigan and 12th at Mexico) and there goes the bad luck again.”
Wallace’s career has been one marked by significant bad luck. Even though he’s one of NASCAR Cup’s most popular drivers, he’s made the playoffs just once (2023). And now he’s on the verge of dropping below the qualifying line in the last nine regular season races.
“They told me there’s no such thing as bad luck, we create our own luck,” Wallace said. “I hate it for my guys, I hate it for McDonald’s. We knew it was going to be a grind and I was mentally prepared for that all day.
“As frustrating as it gets not being able to pass here in Pocono, we were going to just take our lumps and march our way through and set ourselves up for the end of the race, but the brakes just didn’t want to hang on that long.”
Despite the disappointment and frustration, Wallace still left Pocono with a semi-humorous comment. When asked if it was confirmed that it was a brake issue, Wallace quipped, “My foot told my a—, which told my brain.”
What’s next for Wallace and the No. 23 team? “Reset and go again next week,” he said.
