Bubba Wallace responds after missing out on chance at Sonoma pole

Even though he has made strides to improve on the road courses, Bubba Wallace was more than frustrated with his NASCAR Sonoma qualifying performance. He was mad enough to post online about it.

Short tracks and road courses have been a struggle for Bubba Wallace in the Cup Series. Over the last two years especially, Wallace has worked very hard on his racecraft in those types of events.

Even though he has improved, Wallace sees himself as a top-10 driver. When he doesn’t qualify that well, it’s a big deal for him. Especially with how much work his 23 team puts into the road course program.

Qualifying P18 made him upset enough to tweet this after.

🤬 I wanna get this 💩 figured out!

— Bubba Wallace (@BubbaWallace) June 8, 2024

Joey Logano was the pole winner, scoring his third of the season.

“It’s funny how that works, right?” Wallace said to media after qualifying. “Still the same frustrations, still pissed off the same amount. God, I just need to be more happy, might be better. … No I know, it’s that you put in the work and spend hours for Sonoma, and any road course racing we put in the work and the effort. Still, my first lap on track is usually the fastest of anybody and then I never get any faster. So, gotta figure out how to continue to find speed.”

As far as the race goes, there is a repave on the entire track and a new wall on the inside of Turn 11. Will that create more chaos and cautions? Bubba Wallace says that all depends on the field.

“Just depends on how everybody wakes up in the morning and how we’re going to play. So, just try to race everybody how you want to be raced and see how it goes. But all-in-all just gotta make the most of it and see what happens.”

Disappointing result, but not the end of his weekend.

Bubba Wallace can salvage Sonoma weekend

The last thing that Bubba Wallace needs to do is get in his head about this. Denny Hamlin, his boss, was the pole winner a year ago and qualified P25 overall. So, it is all just relative. One mistake can’t turn into more, though.

Wallace only has a best finish of P17 all-time at Sonoma. That is over the course of five races at the track in the Cup Series. That finish was last season, actually. Funny enough, Bubba qualified P18 in last year’s race as well.

He can look at that one of two ways: passing will be hard but it might not be all bad. Holding serve and finishing in the top-20 is the least that Wallace can do. He is in a points battle right now without a win, and he is on the good side of that battle for the time being.

Bubba Wallace was not happy after qualifying. He can’t let that get in his way on Sunday, though.