If NASCAR was to ever put together a dictionary of racing terms, alongside the word “ironic” would be a photo of a lug nut from Bubba Wallace’s car.
Advertisement
While there have been countless incidents of loose or missing lug nuts over the last decade-plus in NASCAR, few have been so freakish or were due to a fluke of circumstance than what happened to Bubba Wallace in Saturday night’s Cup race at Richmond Raceway.
Bubba was enjoying the race of his career. He led the most laps (123) that he’s ever led in a single race. He was dominating the event and unless he was caught up in a crash, likely would have gone on to win the race.
But a simple lug nut, worth only a couple bucks, tops, led to disaster for Wallace. Had he not already won the Brickyard 400 a few weeks ago, securing his spot in the upcoming Cup playoffs, who knows if he’d have had another chance.
As impressive as Wallace was at Indianapolis, he was much more so at Richmond. And sadly, what happened wasn’t even his fault.
As it turned out, a single lug nut for the left front wheel somehow fell out of the wheel gun with no one on the No. 23 pit crew noticing it. Wallace pulled away out of his pit stall, went maybe 50 feet, and then thud, the wheel fell off and Bubba’s great adventure had suddenly turned into Bubba’s horrible debacle.
To Wallace’s good fortune, the pit crew of fellow Toyota driver Chase Briscoe, who was still out on the track, saw what happened to Wallace and promptly pitched in to get the tire back on his car.
But between the time lost after the tire fell off, in addition to the resulting penalty assessed for not having the tire secured, what looked like a win, or perhaps nothing less than a top five finish, at worst, turned into one of the most frustrating and embarrassing outcomes of Wallace’s career. He finished a dismal 28th.
While a pair of tweets showed the entire pit stop and the calamitous situation and end result, there really is no one to point a finger of blame at. Wallace’s jack man dropped the car at the right time although the replay shows very clearly that the front tire changer did not have enough time to put the lug nut into position. In most pit stops, when the jackman drops the car, the tire changer should be finishing attaching and tightening the lug nut into place.
Let’s dig into the details of the lost wheel on the No. 23 and why the jackman wasn’t wrong to drop the car when he did. pic.twitter.com/go6KkbwFYH
— Bozi Tatarevic (@BoziTatarevic) August 17, 2025
Wallace pulled away at the right time. The front tire changer, to his credit, was prompt to start waving his hands at the pit box in frustration, yelling over the team radio that something was wrong, knowing that the lug nut was not tight, and that maybe there was a way Wallace could have stopped before the wheel fell off.
Unfortunately, at about the same time that the tire changer finished waving was also about the same time the tire fell off.
Not surprisingly, Wallace did not make any comments to the media after the race and retained radio silence even on Sunday, the day afterward. But somehow, some way, Bubba will have to address what happened publicly with the media this week. The longer he doesn’t say anything will only make Wallace and the entire team look and feel worse than they already have been.
Trying to point a finger of blame would be the wrong thing to do, running the risk of impacting the team’s spirit and motivation, especially at a time when spirit and motivation will need to be sky-high heading into the Cup playoffs after this Sunday’s race at Daytona.
Nor would blaming anyone, other than cruel fate, ultimately change the course of events anyway. It’s better to let things lay, move on to Daytona and put Saturday’s error in the team’s rearview as quickly as possible.
For if the team dwells upon the mistake, it could screw up the whole playoff experience, mess with the team’s mojo and ultimately cause Bubba to make a first round exit from advancing to Round 2 of the playoffs.
