Bubba Wallace Is Good, Actually

What haters (and supporters) get wrong about NASCAR's most polarizing driver

Sometimes, it feels impossible to cut through the noise that follows Bubba Wallace around everywhere he goes.

Criticism of Wallace is inescapable. Whenever he crashes, or even scrapes the wall — both of which Wallace did (the latter, then the former) at Daytona this past weekend, as well as in the Clash two weeks earlier — critics crawl out of the woodwork to take shots at the 23XI team’s flagship driver. As always, many of the comments insinuate that Wallace is only in the car for diversity reasons, as NASCAR’s lone full-time black driver; a fair number will call back to nooses and Confederate flags for good measure. And that’s just after the unintentional on-track incidents — the intentional ones, like Wallace’s inexcusable wreck-and-fight with Kyle Larson last October, elicit exponentially more negativity from fans and observers.

But Wallace is also undeniably one of NASCAR’s biggest stars. He does commercials, graces the covers of video games and is prominently featured in the sport’s own promotions. Expectations come with that territory — expectations that seem to weigh particularly heavy on Wallace. He often wears his emotions openly. He is notoriously hard on himself when he doesn’t win. And even when he does, Wallace’s post-victory interviews are more a mix of relief and rebukes directed at the haters than pure celebrations. All of this just seems to be the burden of being Bubba.

What gets lost in the storm of hype and hate, between Wallace’s polarizing personality (I happen to find him fascinating) and the people who would love to see him succeed or fail for their own agendas, is that Wallace is a legitimately talented driver in his own right. Coming off the best season of his career, with a car and team that look ready to win, Wallace could be due for a big season in 2023 — provided he can just tune out all that noise.

That’s easier said than done, of course.

Wallace is open about how much he’s battled depression over the course of his career, and he often comes off like a man deeply desperate to prove his worth — a mindset that can quickly spiral into hotheaded disaster if one isn’t careful. Add in his status as a minority in a Southern sport that doesn’t have a reputation for embracing change, and it’s not surprising that the clouds of controversy hang over Wallace every chance they get. As alluded to above, even Wallace’s strongest season was marred by an ugly incident in which he intentionally wrecked Larson at 170 mph, then walked across the track and proceeded to shove Larson multiple times.

That episode earned Wallace a one-race suspension and furthered his reputation for immature outbursts. Blow-ups aside, though, it was a strong season. Wallace won his second career race at Kansas in dominant fashion, leading the final 43 laps. He set new career bests in numerous categories, including podium finishes (4), Top 5s (5), Top 10s (10), laps led (150), average start (18.4), average finish (18.3), average driver rating (70.8) and ranking in the Cup Series standings (19th). According to my adjusted points system, Wallace was an above-average driver for the first time in his career (106 Pts+); and in the second half of the season specifically, he ranked seventh-best among full-time drivers with a 143 Pts+.

Some of Wallace’s breakout could be attributed to settling in for a second season at the newly formed 23XI outfit, which has the financial backing of Michael Jordan and fellow driver Denny Hamlin. Coming over from an underpowered Richard Petty Motorsports team that hadn’t fielded an above-average driver by Pts+ since Aric Almirola in 2015, Wallace was 23XI’s only driver in 2021 and posted an 86 Pts+, an improvement over his performance at Petty but still below average. The following season, however, Wallace had more continuity with crew chief Bootie Barker and a real team around him, featuring 2004 Cup Series champion Kurt Busch (and later, eventual Xfinity Series champ Ty Gibbs, after Busch suffered a season-ending concussion). All of this doubtless helped Wallace produce more consistent results.

But even with a stronger team, Wallace outdrove his teammates to the tune of a lower average finish indexed to average (a 97 Finish-, versus a 104 Finish- for his 23XI teammates) and a better Pts+ (106 for Wallace, versus 95 for his teammates). That 11-point gap in Pts+ across the whole season widened to 84 points during the second half — see the table above — as Gibbs hopped in the other car from round 21 onward. With Wallace switching to the No. 45 car to preserve its chance at the owners’ championship, his strong second half helped 23XI finish 10th in the team standings.

That isn’t the performance of someone who merely has a ride out of tokenism. To compare Wallace with Danica Patrick, the Cup Series’ most active female driver — and someone else often accused of being boosted out of a diversity agenda — Patrick never had a Pts+ better than 65 in a season, never had a Finish- lower than 107, never ranked better than 24th in the Cup Series standings, never had a Top 5 finish in any race (much less winning one — her best finish was 6th at the 2014 Oral-B USA 500) and was frequently driven circles around by her Stewart-Haas Racing teammates.

In other words, Wallace has already done significantly better at the Cup Series level than Patrick did. That’s no knock on Patrick, who was consistently good on the IndyCar circuit (where she finished 5th in the standings in 2009) and was competitive in the Xfinity Series as well. It’s more a testament to Wallace’s talent as a driver at stock car racing’s highest level. But if you accept the premise that Wallace is actually a pretty good driver at this level, those rooting for further success — and clearly I am among that group — are also rooting for two things: That he can take the next (and arguably hardest) step, from good to great, and that he can also keep his composure along the way.

Though he led 5 laps in Daytona and was tracking for a Top-10 finish until getting caught up in an overtime wreck that wiped out much of the remaining field, Wallace had a mediocre day overall (20th place, 65.1 driver rating) in his season debut. He is currently +4000 to win the Cup Series championship — the same odds carried by Chase Briscoe and out-of-nowhere Daytona winner Ricky Stenhouse Jr. Clearly the oddsmakers don’t see Wallace making the big leap yet. And yet, his average per-race high position of 4.2 and 51.2% rate of laps in the Top 15 during the second half of last season indicate he has the car to stay near the front of the pack and put himself in a position for good things to happen.

The bigger hurdle for Wallace to clear might just be the emotional factor. Those hoping for a new, cooler-tempered Bubba Wallace for 2023 already took a blow when Wallace was penalized for intentionally slamming into Austin Dillon at the Clash at The Coliseum earlier this month. While it was in retaliation for getting dumped by Dillon with 7 laps to go, the fact that Wallace wouldn’t let that slide in an exhibition race could be disappointing proof that he hasn’t changed and grown from the things that held him back in 2022.

Only time will tell whether that will end up being the only incident of note for Wallace this season. If it is, that would go a long way toward helping Wallace achieve his potential as a truly great NASCAR racer. And if not? Well, the haters do always need new ammunition.

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Filed under: NASCAR