This year’s NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs cracked a milestone for the 23XI Racing team and Bubba Wallace. After there were no new winners at Daytona last weekend, the regular season came to a close, placing Wallace in playoffs for the first time in his career. Meanwhile, for the team, it was the first time since their inception that both cars had made their way into the playoffs.
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Everyone involved in the 23XI Racing project, including co-owner Michael Jordan, was in attendance to celebrate the moment. After the drop of the checkered flag, which confirmed Wallace’s playoff entry, the NBA legend went down to the infield to celebrate the moment with the team.
Now as we head off to the first playoff race for the season at Darlington, the press quizzed Wallace about what it felt like to have Jordan celebrating his playoff entry alongside him.
Bubba Wallace on Michael Jordan celebrating with Him
Speaking to the media ahead of the first playoff race at Darlington this Sunday, Wallace opened up on how he felt having Jordan celebrate with the entire team after his and his team’s major milestone. “I think that is a better question for the team members because I would be interested to see how they felt. I thought it was really cool to share that with them,” Wallace described.
He added, “For me, that’s just MJ (Michael Jordan) being happy and proud and wanting to see his cars do well. To have the interaction with Bootie (Barker, crew chief) was really cool. The reaction with the crew was really neat. So I’m sure they felt really ecstatic over that.”
Wallace might be in the playoffs, but his team isn’t
As surprising as this may sound, that is the truth. Yes, Wallace did make it to the playoffs as a contending driver. However, his #23 team was not so fortunate. Hence, no matter how well Wallace performs in the driver’s playoffs, his team would not be able to get any higher than 17th in the owner’s playoffs.
So who dethroned Wallace’s team in the owner playoffs?
Well, that would be the #9 car of Chase Elliott. Even though the HMS driver had been out of the race car for several weeks, the drivers who replaced him managed to score just enough points to make this happen. Interestingly, this was the exact spot where Wallace was in last year in place of Elliott. He had not made it to the playoffs but did compete in the owner’s playoffs, driving an injured Kurt Busch’s #45 car during the postseason.
