Bubba Wallace spins during practice at COTA, avoids major issues
Last season, Bubba Wallace had an uncharacteristically strong performance at COTA. This year, he’s already having issues. This NASCAR track in Texas has a lot of changes. A lot of the track is repaved, except for the new shortcut section that cuts the typical F1 course down by a mile in length.
A lot of drivers have been hit with course-cutting penalties. Except in practice there is no penalty. Cutting the course will earn drivers a disqualified lap in qualifying and a stop-and-go penalty with an alternate lane that drivers must use during the race.
Bubba Wallace was running laps in practice behind his new teammate Riley Herbst. Coming off a curb going into one of the higher speed areas of the track, the 23 car snapped around. Wallace was able to get his car turned back around and kept on moving.
Here’s how Clint Bowyer and Kevin Harvick broke it down.
Good news this was during practice. No major problem if you spin out. Those tires are not going to be used for anything else anyway. The big takeaway is that Bubba Wallace didn’t wreck his car. If he had been running too close to Riley Herbst the two teammates could have collided.
Bad news is that Wallace doesn’t have great speed on this new course. He was hovering around 20th place overall in the first practice session by way of single-lap speed. Maybe he has something up his sleeve for the second practice or the qualifying session.
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This is a stacked NASCAR Cup Series field at COTA. Between the Hendrick Motorsports drivers, Trackhouse Racing drivers, and guys like AJ Allmendinger and Chris Buescher, the road course talent is elite.
Bubba Wallace will have hard time repeating 2024 performance at COTA
As I mentioned earlier, Bubba Wallace had a solid performance at COTA last year. Much better than his previous three attempts at the track. Wallace managed to qualify P10 and finished P15 overall.
To put that into context, his previous best was qualifying P11 and finishing P37 in 2023. He has had two early accidents and a suspension issue take him out of three of four races early. Finishing the race would likely result in his second-best result at COTA.
Bubba Wallace is not known for his road course skills. However, since he teamed up with Tyler Reddick in 2023, his talents have improved. Will he show those talents this weekend at COTA or will it be a long Sunday of driving for the 23 team?