While Kyle Larson left the 2024 Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway as the overall race winner, Bubba Wallace left Indy feeling like a winner and with a relieved smile across his face after finishing in fifth place, which enabled him to gain valuable ground toward his 2024 NASCAR Cup Series Playoff hopes.
The 30-year-old and two-time Cup Series winner Wallace from Mobile, Alabama, commenced his fourth start at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in the NASCAR Cup Series level by rolling off the starting grid in 17th place. Ironically, Wallace also started 17th during the 2020 season, where Indy held the Brickyard 400 on the oval-shaped circuit before transitioning to the venue’s road-course circuit over the next three seasons.
After spending the early portions of the event racing within the top 15, Wallace cycled towards the front and the top-five category as pit strategies amongst the field ensued. Despite pitting under green nearing the Lap 40 mark, Wallace would cycle up to 11th place when the first stage period concluded on Lap 50.
Despite being one spot short of collecting a first wave of stage points during the first stage period, Wallace and his No. 23 U.S. Air Force Toyota Camry XSE team led by crew chief Bootie Barker struck back through pit strategy by inheriting the lead on Lap 76 and during a caution period amid a multi-car wreck that knocked William Byron, AJ Allmendinger and Harrison Burton out of contention. With Wallace leading for the next restart period on Lap 78, he would fend off Chase Elliott and stretch his fuel tank to the maximum distance as he led to the second stage’s conclusion on Lap 100, where he would collect his first elusive stage victory of the 2024 season. With this accomplishment, Wallace notched his first stage victory in a Cup Series race since Las Vegas Motor Speedway in October 2022.
Restarting within the mid-pack region for the final stage after pitting during the second stage’s break period, Wallace would spend the remainder of the event dodging a series of late-race carnages while trying to play the fuel strategy game to his favor. During the process, he methodically worked his way back up the leaderboard and within the top-15 category. Initially poised for a potential top-10 spot, an opportunity for Wallace to gain more spots and stretch his fuel tank to the distance both occurred when Kyle Busch wrecked with three laps remaining in the event’s scheduled distance.
With the event going into overtime, Wallace muscled away from a multi-car wreck on the frontstretch to make his way up to sixth place just as the event was sent into a second overtime attempt. For the second and final overtime attempt, Wallace, who restarted seventh, gained two spots on the track after overtaking Austin Cindric and Todd Gilliland through two turns. Running in fifth place on the final lap, the event’s race-ending caution flew as Ryan Preece wrecked and stalled his car in the backstretch. Having enough fuel to return to the frontstretch, Wallace claimed the checkered flag in fifth place, three spots behind teammate Tyler Reddick, for his fourth top-five result of the 2024 Cup Series season.
With the result, Wallace, who led a total of 26 of 167 over-scheduled laps en route to his fifth-place run at Indy, recorded his second top-five finish in four career starts in the Brickyard 400 and his first of the 2024 season since finishing fourth at Martinsville Speedway in April. The result also marked his 20th top-five finish in his 241st career start in the Cup level, 129th driving for 23XI Racing, as Wallace currently has eight top-10 results added to his 2024 season.
In addition, Wallace, who came into Indianapolis trailing the top-16 cutline to make the 2024 Cup Series Playoffs by 27 points despite finishing 10th during last weekend’s event at Pocono Raceway, is now only seven points below the cutline and 16th-place occupier Ross Chastain, who ended up 15th place. As NASCAR takes a two-week break from on-track competition due to the Paris Olympics before returning in the second weekend of August, Wallace, who made his first Cup Playoff appearance on points and proceeded to finish 10th in the final standings in 2023, took a moment to savor the relief of gaining ground towards the cutline before the break as he also sets his sights on having a fun, positive approach towards the remainder of the season.
“[The] Team stuck with me and gave me all the right tools to work on and gave us good track position in the middle [of the race],” Wallace said on NBC. “Finally got a stage win. [It’s] Been 10 years since I got one of those. All in all, just a solid day. Definitely what we needed. [I] Can have a big sigh of relief going into the Olympic break here. It’s just nice to come out of here with a smile, enjoy the two off weeks,…just to have fun. That’s what I wanted to do last week and continue that for the next, what do we got? Fourteen [races] left? All about having fun.”
With four races remaining until the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series Playoff field is determined, Bubba Wallace’s quest to make the Playoffs continues with the next scheduled event at Richmond Raceway for the Cook Out 400. The event is scheduled for August 11 and will air at 6 p.m. ET on USA Network.
