Bubba Wallace is raring to go back to Indianapolis Motor Speedway for the 30th running of the NASCAR Cup Series’ Brickyard 400, a race he claimed last July in his 23XI Racing Toyota.
Thirteenth in points after 21 races, the 32-year-old Wallace may just have the momentum after his recent runs to make it happen Sunday afternoon and become the fourth repeat winner and first since Kevin Harvick in 2020.
The Camry driver has two top-five finishes plus a pair of sixths and has led five of the seven races since the start of June.
The other three runs were enormous hits to his Chase hopes: A 21st-place effort at Pocono, 22nd at Sonoma and 29th at Atlanta’s EchoPark Speedway.
Of course, that Georgia finish is deceiving because of the last-lap pass Wallace made on Carson Hocevar, whipping his No. 23 partially below the yellow line on the backstretch and coming home second to good friend Ryan Blaney.
However, the team was penalized, disappeared from the live leaderboard and tumbled to just one spot ahead of 30th.
“We got a better understanding of the rule,” Wallace said the next week at North Wilkesboro. “To me, I always thought it was like gaining position, but no, it’s gaining track position, which I totally did. … I thought they would care about the data that I tried to give (the spot) back, but the damage was already done.”
Wallace scored his third career victory by running eight overtime laps a year ago and topping 2024 Indy winner Kyle Larson to win the scheduled 160-lapper.
It would be impossible to go back home again to Indiana without revisiting Sunday night and where North Wilkesboro Speedway now stands in the sport’s future.
Was the Window World 450 and its strange distance in laps perfect?
Absolutely not. Not even close.
However, the short track that lay dormant for almost three decades raced like it always has to those who have watched it for decades: minimal cautions, not much contact, little body damage and a few cars on the lead lap.
Wallace was the final driver on Sunday night’s lead lap, and the track record for most cars finishing on it is just 13 in the 1992 Spring event won by Davey Allison, while only two — winner Geoffrey Bodine and Mark Martin — completed all 400 later that Fall.
In those respects, NWS is different from many short tracks: It does not race like a bullring.
Yet going there last weekend was like walking into a museum boarded up since 1996. It was a racing experience that was good for the soul.
Keeping the dilapidated “Winston Cup Series” ads and other weathered Winston red on the walls near the track entrance was a chef’s kiss to racing fans.
NASCAR shouldn’t go there twice a season like it did in the previous century, but neither should it ever be left off the schedule again and ignored.
At Daytona in 2014 with crew chief Steve Letarte, Dale Earnhardt Jr. waited out a nearly six-hour rain delay and won his second 500 by beating Denny Hamlin, who was victorious in both of his Speedweeks starts, to snap a 55-race skid that wore on his legion of Junior Nation fans.
Said teammate Jeff Gordon of Dale Jr.’s long-awaited victory: “All is right with the world again.”
With North Wilkesboro back in the fray, that opinion is seconded.
