In 2023, for the first time in his NASCAR Cup career, Bubba Wallace made it past the regular season and into the playoffs, after which his next goal was to make it to the next round of the playoffs. Of course, winning a race would’ve taken him to where he wanted, a chance of which came in Kansas. But as it turned out, it didn’t go exactly to the plan.
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Wallace, who was running a promising race, with many hoping and wondering if he could go all the way to the victory lane, suddenly blew a tire and his good day suddenly turned into a bad one. This put the #23 driver in a tricky position heading into the Bristol night race. But before that, he wondered if he had jinxed himself at Kansas.
This was something that came to light during an episode of the recent Netflix docu-series, ‘NASCAR: Full Speed.’ In Episode 2, Wallace opens up about celebrating too much, to the point where one jinxes themselves in a way.
“As soon as you get on a high, there’s always something and you’re knocked back down. And it makes you question like, ‘Man, did I celebrate too hard?’ ‘Did I blow that good part up too much?’, to where it’s like, ‘Okay, we’ve gotta humble you?’ You’re never gonna blow a tire running 20th and you’re never gonna blow a tire when you’re having an off day,” Wallace said.
“You only blow a tire when it’s a good day and you have a shot at winning.”
Bubba Wallace on the importance of being patient in pursuit of excellence
Later in the same episode, during the buildup to the Bristol night race, Bubba Wallace opened up about being hard on himself and the idea of pleasing everyone. “I think the world knows I’m my worst critic. I often get in my own way,” he said.
“Then you kind of get lost in trying to please everybody and just be the best at everything, and it takes time to do that, and being the best at everything doesn’t happen in one day.”
But Wallace’s comments are followed by his crew chief, Bootie Barker, who revealed the tenacity of a NASCAR Cup driver, something clearly present in high amounts in Bubba Wallace. “It’s a very few of us that are actually in the arena. Everybody else is just a critic, but so few are willing to put themselves in that position with the stress, what the pressure, with the whatever,” Barker said.
“But you gotta do it.”
The crew chief added that one simply needs to “buckle down” and focus on the task at hand, which is exactly what Wallace did at Bristol, as he emerged with a place in the next round of the playoffs.
