Bubba Wallace had a question and kept asking those around him until he got an answer.
“Where’d he finish?” Wallace asked of teammate Tyler Reddick while doing his required top five media obligations on pit road Sunday at Martinsville Speedway. “Was he top 10?”
Wallace, who finished fourth, then turned to his 23XI Racing public relations representative and asked the same question. The answer finally came: Reddick had finished seventh.
“Oh, wow. Proud of the little buddy,” Wallace playfully said. “I didn’t see him all day.”
The amusing exchange resulted from Wallace acknowledging that 23XI Rac ing performs well on short tracks but doesn’t have many results to reflect those performances. Sunday was Wallace’s best finish in the NASCAR Cup Series at the half-mile Martinsville Speedway in his 13 tries. Furthermore, it was his first top-five finish at Martinsville and just his third top-10.
“We do a lot of things that hurt our results, there’s no doubt about it,” Wallace said. “But we’re all taking big self-reflection over the last couple of months and being like, ‘Hey, let’s get our stuff together.’ And we know what we’re capable of. It’s days like this. I’ll continue to take top four finishes because eventually, your name will be thrown in the winner’s circle.”
The result came from a different feel Wallace had searched for in previous Martinsville Speedway races. He and the No. 45 team were contenders from the first on-track activity when he was second fastest overall in practice before qualifying second (after losing the pole to Kyle Larson by 0.001s).
“A lot to build off, a lot to learn, a lot to debrief with the team,” Wallace said. “If we came back tomorrow, we’d be even better. But I appreciate everybody on this No. 23 team. The McDonald’s Toyota Camry was really, really good.