Within the warmth of the 2024 NASCAR Cup Collection season, Nashville could also be some of the vital races of Bubba Wallace’s profession.
With the Chicago avenue course looming and the No. 23 staff not placing forth a top-10 effort since Darlington on Could 12, there’s by no means been a greater time for Wallace to place collectively among the best runs of his profession at a monitor that completely suits each him and 23XI Racing.
Wallace enters Sunday’s Ally 400 seventeenth on the Cup Collection playoff grid, 13 factors out of a playoff spot. The Cell, Alabama native appeared primed to extend his benefit over the playoff cutline at New Hampshire with Joey Logano ending thirty second, however Wallace as a substitute countered with a Thirty fourth-place end after a late-race run in with Noah Gragson.
With finishes of Twelfth and fifteenth within the two Subsequent-Gen races at Nashville, Wallace has confirmed that he can run up entrance on the Tennessee monitor. With Logano struggling on intermediates up to now this season, it is a golden alternative for the No. 23 staff to leap again into the provisional playoff image.
Together with Sunday’s race at Nashville, simply eight races stay in NASCAR’s 26 race regular-season, and with six playoff spots nonetheless open, it is anybody’s guess as to who will battle it out for the championship.
If Wallace desires to be included within the championship struggle for the second consecutive season, nevertheless, Nashville is a pivotal race. Whereas good tracks for Wallace’s staff in Pocono and Indianapolis lay down the highway in July, one potential demon is looming massive — the eccentric Chicago avenue race on July 7, the place Wallace completed thirty first one 12 months in the past.
There isn’t any doubt that Wallace has improved on road-courses — even to the purpose the place a Twelfth-place run at Watkins Glen helped achieve him a playoff berth in 2023 — however with Chicago being a beast of its personal, the outlook for the No. 23 staff’s day within the shadows of Chicago’s skyscrapers is lower than optimistic.
If Wallace can come out of Nashville with a top-15 effort and a few stage factors or higher, it may set the No. 23 staff up for a authentic playoff push. If Nashville yields one other poor day, nevertheless, it may spell doom for Wallace’s probabilities of making the 16-driver playoff discipline.
