NASCAR insider names 'key moment' in race for Bubba Wallace, react to strong Homestead performance

The first top-five finish of the season for Bubba Wallace has the 23 team looking good early. Could this be the year for Wallace? He hasn’t won a race since Kansas-2 in 2022. He’s been close a few times. But is the NASCAR driver knocking on the door to his next win?

Bubba Wallace has faced a lot of criticism in the last two seasons. Some of that is warranted, for sure. 2024 was a career-best season in terms of top-five finishes and other stats. Still, the 23 team was not in the playoffs.

Following his strong P3 performance at Homestead-Miami, Wallace is turning heads once more. Jeff Gluck and Jordan Bianchi of The Athletic discussed the strong result on The Teardown.

“Another person who we saw perform today, we talked about Bubba Wallace,” Gluck said. “56 laps led today was his most since Texas 2023. He obviously has not won since September of 2022. This has been a good year for Bubba overall. He’s talking about bringing a different mindset to the track, he is 7th in the point standings right now. Both 23XI drivers are up in the top seven in points. So, he’s kind of doing what he needs to do. I thought this was going to be more of a Reddick race if you’re talking about 23XI. Reddick finished 8th and we never saw Reddick really sniff the front today, he didn’t lead a lap. Where Bubba was carrying the banner for 23XI.”

Bianchi chimed in with what he saw as the key moment of the race for Bubba Wallace. It happened on a restart where Noah Gragson checked up or missed a shift and caused all kinds of chaos.

“I thought there was a key moment in this race … There was a restart there where Logano and Gragson kind of got into the 23 car and Bubba got a little, got pushed into the wall and got fired up for like a quick second, but then he quickly came back down,” Bianchi explained. “Years past, Bubba, there’s been a tendency where those moments tend to be prolonged and Bubba gets really riled up and it kinda snowballs a little bit and it’s like all of a sudden a day that looks like it was going to go well just goes the other direction. Where today, frustration, expressed it, over it, moves on and then right back to continuing to do their thing.”

Bubba Wallace had a great day at Homestead. He led the second most laps on the day only behind Ryan Blaney. Wallace had superior short-run speed. He didn’t get the late caution that he needed to show it, though.