Bubba Wallace admits he has been doing a lot of “DUMB stuff” in 2024

The Toyota driver finished an underwhelming fifteenth at the race in COTA.

Bubba Wallace admits he has been doing a lot of “DUMB stuff” in 2024

Bubba Wallace (Via IMAGO)

Bubba Wallace began the season with a pair of top-five finishes at Daytona and Atlanta. These performances were expected to have set a precedent for the 23XI racer in the upcoming races. However, this initial boost in momentum did not transcend into achieving better results in the following races. This has now led the 30-year-old to admit that the lack of results in the recent races is because of his silly mistakes.

Bubba Wallace‘s recent form has raised questions regarding whether he will ever be able to achieve a third career win and playoff entry in 2024, after having his career best season last year. Even in COTA, where multiple drivers tripped over each other, it could have been an important opportunity for the D4D graduate to score a top-10 finish at least, but he failed to do so.

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The 23XI driver elaborated. ahead of the COTA race, that aside from the speedway races (such as Daytona and Atlanta), a top-10 finish has been a long-shot for him despite having fast cars. Most of these results are a consequence of his mistakes during the race. Thus, he wants to come out of the shadow of his subpar run of results and perform at his caliber to make it to the Round of 12 this year like the previous year.

Aside from the speedway races, we’ve not been executing the way we should be. We’ve been taking ourselves out of the game. I’ve been doing dumb stuff. So it’s falling in the same trend as every other year.
Bubba Wallace said in an interview with Frontstretch

Bubba Wallace was lucky to have an incident with boss Denny Hamlin at COTA

Denny Hamlin and Bubba Wallace managed a 14th and 15th place finish respectively at COTA. At the late part of the race, the team owner-driver duo exchanged few blows. The 43-year-old explained that he made a lunge on the 23XI driver and misjudged it as he had contact with him.

Bubba Wallace and Denny Hamlin
Bubba Wallace and Denny Hamlin (Credits: Outsider)

Moreover, it seemed like Kyle Busch and Christopher Bell like incident at first. But the drivers recovered and pressed on to take the checkered flag after the clash. While both driver enjoyed the fight, it wouldn’t have been a good feeling if one of them had an issue during the dual. 

I dove in there pretty late but it came down to the apex and I clipped his left rear. That was the upside. Then we battled corner after corner side by side and on every exit I’m kind of using him as my eight tires are better than four. I start sliding on the exit and I’m like ‘Oh he’s there. I’ll just go there and lean on him. The whole last lap was a blast.

Denny Hamlin said in an interview with FOX.

Despite intra-team tensions at 23XI, both drivers would be focusing on maximizing the point-scoring opportunities on the weekends. Subsequently, taking the Hamlin-owned outfit to greater heights in the series.

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