After kissing the bricks to celebrate winning the Brickyard 400, Bubba Wallace joined the NASCAR on TNT booth post-race to walk them through the closing laps, the rollercoaster of emotions that came with them.
"What an incredible opportunity for me to be a part of," Wallace took a breath and continued. "And then capitalize on. The No. 22 has an issue, I think he had a right-rear flat, and in that moment, you don’t know what happens, you just run your own race. Then you hear you’re the leader with 20 laps to go. ‘Oh, damn,’ It felt like the race just started, and here we go."
Wallace cycled to the lead after lap 17. Joey Logano would've been ahead of him when the final five went to pit, but Logano blew a right rear tire, forcing him to pit as the race continued green.
Then, in the lead at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, possibly at the end of a 100-race win drought, Wallace got ahead of himself.
"I hate that I started counting the eggs before they hatched," Wallace continued. "I started to think of who to thank and how big the celebration is going to be, then I go and miss a corner, like ‘easy! Focus!’.
My car was going extremely loose, and I can not drive these things loose at all. I started thinking ‘oh man, this is it, this is over with.’ Then I started thinking about my son, I started thinking about what MJ would say, and all of a sudden, the car got better."
23XI Racing coowner Micheal Jordan was not in attendance this week, but his legacy and words carried through for Wallace on his path to victory.
"It was like, 'okay, this is our race still,' those last 20 laps were a surreal moment for me to be a part of and be in the passenger seat for," Wallace continued. "Yes, I’m extremely worn out, mentally, physically."
While Wallace was practicing who to thank in the closing laps, he quickly forgot it after exiting the car, remembering to look for his wife and son and leaving out the sponsors.
"I didn’t thank anybody, my mind is not there, but I appreciate Chumba Casino for coming onboard, McDonald's, Air Force, Leidos, Robinhood, Toyota, Mobil 1… thankfully the camera is right there, I can see everybody on my fire suit."
"It’s been an incredibly fun but difficult journey. I remember when Blaney won the 600 after being in a drought and said, 'You don’t know if you can do it anymore. It was going on three years, four years in the No. 23, my last one was in the No. 45."
Wallace's last victory came in 2022, when he filled in for Kurt Busch's No. 45 to chase championship points in the owners' championship after Wallace failed to qualify the No. 23 and Busch sat out the remaining races following a concussion sustained at Pocono. The last time he won in the No. 23 was his first win in 2022 at Talladega, where he became the black driver to win in NASCAR Cup since Wendell Scott in 1963.
"We did it. That’s the first thing my wife said to me: 'We did it.' You don’t know how many times I told myself that I couldn’t do it in those last 20 laps, and here we are. I’m proud to sit up here with you guys."
When the yellow flag for rain came out with six to go, Wallace radioed, "It's fine, it's fine," in response to the rain. After the race, Wallace shared that he's glad he got to win the race under green flag conditions, racing against the best."
"This shit is so hard," Wallace said, returning to his recounting of the final laps. "I look in the mirror and I’m like, ‘here we go with the No. 5, what’s going to happen?' I thought under that first green-white-checkers that to be the best, you have to beat the best.
We can all sit up here and say that Kyle Larson is the best at the time right now, and it’s an honor and privilege to race with him. I go back to what MJ said last year at Darlington: things you want more, cost more. Larson wasn’t getting that from me."
"Thanks, everyone. I thank my parents." Wallace winds down. "I thank my mom. I know she was praying for fuel, because fuel was a big issue, and we had enough. I thank my dad from day one.
I had fun today, Dad," Wallace said through tears, "I had fun today."
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