NASCAR insiders flip view of Bubba Wallace following Brickyard 400

Bubba Wallace is heading into the two-week Olympic with some momentum after finishing fifth in Sunday’s Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Wallace entered Sunday’s race 27 points back of the playoff cutline but is now within seven points of Ross Chastain for the 16th and final playoff spot. Wallace also picked up a Stage 2 win which granted him some valuable playoff points, his first stage victory since 2022.

Jeff Gluck and Jordan Bianchi of The Athletic admitted on “The Teardown” that they had written Wallace off weeks ago, but now believe he has a real shot to make the postseason on points.

“Suddenly, Bubba Wallace out of nowhere is back in this thing,” Gluck said. “I would have thought Bubba Wallace — had you asked me a few weeks ago who needs a break, I would have said Kyle Busch, Bubba Wallace, those would have been the first two. Now, he’s seven points out of a playoff spot. Ross Chastain is only seven points up on him, Chris Buescher is only 17 points up on him. We have wrote Bubba’s chances of making it in on points, we wrote those off completely. And don’t say you didn’t, because I know you did too.

“… Bubba after the race seemed to like that we among others counted him out on this kind of stuff and said, ‘bet you didn’t think I was gonna make it out of the first round of the playoffs last year either.’ Suddenly though, the dude is back in it. He won a stage today, milked his fuel to get those 10 points. And then ends up finishing fifth in this race. So, we’ve been saying there’s gonna be another winner to move that cutline up, but he’s also in the mix.”

As Wallace inches closer to Chastain, the reality is now he can possibly make it through without winning a race. A month ago, that didn’t seem realistic, but strong runs in recent weeks have changed his outlook. Wallace finished P7 at Nashville, P13 at Chicago and P10 at Pocono before his run at IMS.

Bubba Wallace in a great spot with four regular season races remaining

Also going in Wallace’s favor is the upcoming schedule coming out of the Olympic break. Four regular season races remain, and the next three are at tracks he has generally performed well at: Richmond, Michigan and Daytona. Bianchi believes Wallace has a great opportunity ahead of him to get above the playoff cutline.

“I thought they did today what they have been lacking for much of the year,” Bianchi said. “They got stage points today. They got 10 valuable stage points. This was the first stage win for Bubba Wallace since 2022 I believe. The euphoric nature of his voice since he won Stage 2 told you everything you needed to know about the fact that they haven’t won stages and it’s been a problem. That has been an issue to where they’re playing catchup. And after qualifying, he was down. He was frustrated, his teammate was on the pole, they were having to play catchup on a racetrack where it’s really hard to overcome bad track position and they did a great, great job of flipping the script.

“They put themselves into a position to use strategy to get 10 valuable stage points and then they got a top-five finish out of this. This was a race that was atypical of them this year. They haven’t gotten stage points. They certainly haven’t gotten stage wins and they managed the race incredibly well. This has just been missing from their repertoire and they need to be better at this on a weekly basis. It would help negate some of the bad finishes they’ve had this year. We’ve seen this from other drivers where they may have bad finishes. But they’re getting stage points and that certainly helps. … Kudos to him for doing that.

“And now he’s put himself in a position going into a slate of upcoming tracks, Richmond, Michigan, Daytona. Those are three good tracks for Bubba Wallace. Two of those, Daytona and Michigan particularly, strong racetracks for him. He ran really well at Richmond a year ago. He’s in a great spot right now. And I think he’s got an opportunity, he certainly has an opportunity to go out and get himself a playoff spot on points. He also needs to hope that someone below him in points doesn’t win a race. Because that’s only gonna move the cutline up more. But really good job by him putting himself in this position after again, most everyone, including us, wrote him off.”