Denny Hamlin claims Bubba Wallace has “stepped up and running great” in 2025

23XI Racing star driver Bubba Wallace impressed his boss Denny Hamlin with the P3 finish at Homestead Miami last Sunday.

Denny Hamlin claims Bubba Wallace has “stepped up and running great” in 2025

Denny Hamlin and Bubba Wallace (Via IMAGO)

Coming into the 2025 season, after missing out on the playoffs previous year despite producing his best career performance, Bubba Wallace had the goal of ending his two yearlong winless streak and run consistently in the top-10. So far, he has shown signs of potentially achieving this goal with solid runs in the first six races of the year.

Luck hasn’t been on the side of Bubba Wallace, as he got caught up in three wrecks so far that earned him finishes outside the top 25, but his other three finishes has been solid, with P3 last weekend at Homestead Miami being the best. He was close to winning the racer but wasn’t able to catch up to Kyle Larson who was executing with perfection on the track.

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Despite the disappointment, 23XI Racing co-owner Denny Hamlin was impressed with his driver. Via his podcast, the veteran highlighted that with the new crew chief Charles Denike, the No:23 driver has been solid, as they have stepped up and is getting better every other race in the 2025 Cup season so far.

The 23 team deserves a shot out as well. Bubba’s performance throughout the day, they continue to just get better and better like we’ve been saying for the last few years. Between Charles [Denike] leading that team and Bubba, they’ve just really stepped up this year and are running great.

Denny Hamlin said via Actions Detrimental.

An incident from the race shows Bubba Wallace has matured as a racer

Since becoming father, Bubba Wallace has visibly become more composed racer on the track, and this has helped him to produce more solid runs. An incident involving Joey Logano in a late restart showed this maturity on Sunday.

Bubba Wallace
Bubba Wallace (Via IMAGO)

The No:22 of Logano and Noah Gragson of Front Row Motorsports got into the Toyota of Wallace, causing him to lose control of the car. In the past tis situation might have left the racer furious making him to make more mistakes and ruin his race.

But today he showed he no longer act out that way, thinking of the long game as he quickly expressed his frustration them get over it to focus on rest of the race. It helped him to secure the podium finish behind Kyle Larson and Alex Bowman.  

Impressive performance on the pit-road was another reason behind Bubba Wallace’s solid run

One of the major issues all the driver at 23XI Racing, including Wallace, has been facing has been the poor performance and costly mistakes of their pit-crew. They have lost multiple shots at race win because of them.  

Bubba Wallace
Bubba Wallace (Via IMAGO)

But over the last two season, the crew has shown massive improvement. Bubba Wallace didn’t forget to highlight this improvement and credited it for him impressive run at Homestead as well as the consistent performance so far in 2025.

My pit crew has just been on fire. Tremendous amount of work has gone in the last five years of this team to get to where we’re at. We’re not where we want to be, but we’re damn sure competitive each and every stop. They got us up there and gave me a shot, and our Columbia Toyota Camry was just game-changer.

Bubba Wallace said.

The comment from Wallace shows what has been happening behind the scenes at 23XI and the investment so far is yielding positive products. It will be interesting to see how long it will take them to finally win another Cup race.