Bubba Wallace ready to 'turn the ship around' at Kansas Speedway
KANSAS CITY, Kan. — When Bubba Wallace woke up Monday morning, hours after his second straight bummer of a NASCAR Cup Series race, he noticed a new candle warmer courtesy of his wife, Amanda.
“Yes. Did you see what it says on it?” she said, as Wallace recalled Saturday at Kansas Speedway. “It says, ‘It’s a new day.’ I got that for you.”
A fitting and thoughtful gift for a driver in search of a good day like Bubba Wallace is right now.
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Wallace has finished 36th and 32nd in the past two Cup races, at Talladega Superspeedway and Dover Motor Speedway respectively. The 23XI Racing pilot has totaled seven points combined in those two events, a stark contrast from the two weeks prior where he scored 51 points at Martinsville with a fourth-place finish and 40 with a seventh-place run at Texas.
“We’re excited to get to Kansas and turn the ship around,” Wallace said.
If ever there was a track for Wallace to look forward, Kansas sure seems like the spot. Wallace scored his second career Cup win at Kansas in the fall of 2022, driving the No. 45 Toyota for 23XI in place of the injured Kurt Busch, who won in that number just months prior. Wallace’s current teammate, Tyler Reddick, scored the victory the last time NASCAR raced in the Sunflower State in October 2023.
For Wallace — now an expecting father — a shift in mindset has been key in helping his approach to future events and the adversity they may present.
“It’s, I think, learning you know how the sport can go,” Wallace said. “You can start your year off the best we’ve ever done and you got to be mindful that it can go south quick — which it has. But that shouldn’t deter you from the path that you’ve set yourself up for the start of the year. And so you can be frustrated and pissed off all you want, but as long as you make it constructive criticism, giving yourself and the team the right feedback to keep the needle forward, that’s what I’ve been trying to do.
“Basically, it’s easier for me to put it to the side, but it’s still frustrating. It’s still hard. It is what it is though. The sport doesn’t stop; time doesn’t stop for you. So no need to sit and dwell on it. There’s a lot of people in your corner that are looking for good things out of this weekend, so we’ve got to go out and do that for them.”
Wallace has three top 10s in 12 Kansas starts, but all of them came within the past four visits to the Midwest — a 10th-place run in the spring of 2022, his win and a fourth-place finish last spring. With that sort of resume at a track that reappears in the playoffs this season, Wallace is doing his best to keep his head up.
“I mean, that’s all you can do,” Wallace said. “You got to look back at the things that you are in control of. You know, we were doing everything right. We weren’t up in the top five all day. We weren’t leading laps at Dover. But we knew it was gonna be a grind. And you know, I ate that up and I was along for the task, along for the ride and things were OK. You know, we were looking at a top-10 day and then your 32nd, so it is what it is.
“I mean, what are you gonna do? You can’t go back and change the results now. Only thing you can do is start a new result this weekend.”