Toyota Racing – Bubba Wallace
NASCAR Cup Series Quotes
DARLINGTON, S.C. (August 31, 2024) – 23XI Racing driver Bubba Wallace was made available to the media on Saturday after winning the pole for Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series Southern 500 race at Darlington Raceway.
BUBBA WALLACE, No. 23 U.S. Air Force Toyota Camry XSE, 23XI Racing
How much confidence do you have for tomorrow’s race after getting the pole for Sunday’s Southern 500?
“Yeah, you look at us coming in and being on the bubble – 21 points out with a ton of pressure and I think the pressure just switched. We’re not here to mess around. I showed up with a more open and calmer demeanor – more free and relaxing demeanor, but at the same time I don’t want to be messed with. So, it’s a fine balance you’re got to walk. I appreciate the team. We unloaded – we did some changes to the car in the spring race, and it just wouldn’t give me the right read going into qualifying. So, I told Booty (Barker, crew chief), ‘Hey, I need to be this to have a good qualifying run’ and here we are. Just everybody on the 23 car and everybody back at AirSpeed. Both cars just showing up with speed at Darlington for the Southern 500 is super cool. I’ve been close here I think once or twice in qualifying, so to finally pull it out, it’s like ‘Wow! We’ve got it!’ With all that being said, the elephant in the room — tomorrow is a whole different day and I’m excited to see what tomorrow offers.”
What kind of confidence does checking the first box give you to having a good run to make the Playoffs?
“Yeah, for sure. To be honest with you, I was pretty mad after practice and not being on top. I set the expectations pretty high, and we were sixth and I was like ‘God almighty! Alright, I wanted to make a statement,’ and I didn’t do that. So, I had to make that up in qualifying. It’s good to be where we’re at. It’s so hard at this level, right? 17, I don’t know where he qualified – he’s top 10. But there’s no free lunch. That’s one of Bootie’s (Barker, crew chief) many sayings – one of his favorites. Everything you do, there’s no free lunch. There’s nothing guaranteed on the other side. I’ve said this a couple weeks ago after Richmond, it’s going to be a dog fight to the very end. And I think that’s what makes us drivers all great is we’re excited to show up and compete and put it all on the line for our team, our sponsors, our people that work on these cars. We get to do that tomorrow here in Darlington. Yeah, the confidence is there. I get to get humbled here in next few hours going back to racing Legends cars here against Keelan (Harvick). So, yeah, I’ll tell him I got a Southern 500 pole, and he doesn’t.”
Is there a rhythm here that you’ve started to pick-up on here?
“Hell no. I pounded it off the fence in round one and two. It just so happened to work. Where we’re at now is so data driven. Denny (Hamlin) talks about that a lot. How much we dive into data. It took me a while just to get onboard with that, but knowing how much vital information there is inside of all that data – now you can get a little too much into the weeds and so you’ve got to pick and choose. We’ve been really good here in qualifying and we’ve also given up a really good race car trying too hard from what I’m hearing from data and just not getting back to the basics. So today, I’ve determined that Darlington is probably one of the, if not the hardest places to qualify. Just the way you have to approach practice to the qualifying trim, it’s totally different. For example, Kansas the first couple laps in practice you’re damn near wide open. In qualifying, you’re wide open, so it’s close. Here you’re finessing and practicing and then hey, good luck. It all goes back to JR and our analytics group. They do a really good job of feeding us the right information that translates to on-track performance.”
What was the battle between the head and the throttle pedal there?
“So, I’m sitting there, and I remember coming here a year ago, right and we were pretty good in practice and JR is like, ‘Hey, you need to be deeper on entry.’ And I’m like, okay, and I went out in qualifying, and I said, ‘Here’s deeper’ and we were 18th or whatever and that’s not what I meant. You have to understand, and you have to dive into what that actually means. We came here in the spring and my car was okay and I made a move to the bottom in (turns) three and four – not the bottom but the middle and that gave up our pole time. So, here we had a goal to make sure you run the fence in (turns) three and four and right before qualifying I looked over an email with our analytics stuff and I said, ‘Okay, I got on the gas right here in the spring so I’m going to do that.’ It’s a little bit hotter. Track temps up, grip’s not like it is in the spring, and it caught me by surprise. It’s tough. It’s tough to go out – I mean, (Kyle) Larson ran a 43 or 44. I don’t know – it was close. And so, I thought I definitely gave some up especially through (turns) one and two in the second round, but the first round was just perfect.”
Do you think you’ll gain enough stage points to make it a battle on points?
“Yeah, anything can happen we’ve seen. Look at last week, right. Anything can happen so we have to run our own race. It makes it a lot easier for us. Having that first pit stall and as long as long as we execute and make the right calls, be great on pit road then — all I want is every single person a part of this team, including myself, is to go to bed tomorrow night saying, ‘We did whatever we could. We did all we could.’ And maybe it was good enough, maybe it wasn’t so that’s the lottery ticket we’ll find out tomorrow after the race.”
Is racing a Legends car doing all that you can or just a distraction to keep your mind off Sunday’s race?
“Hell, I got my ass kicked. You were there. It was bad. I didn’t need you to confirm that. I love racing Legends cars. I haven’t been in one in over five years and it’s totally different now. It’s more frustrating not being able to jump back into it and being as competitive as I was, but on the other side of that I’m a competitor. I’ll make everything a competition, right. I bet I can write a better article than you. It’s just a competition thing – it’s kind of a joke but I’m going to make it a competition. But it’s just that side of it is just competing and having fun with it all and being around the kids there. It was funny, we were talking about qualifying in the Legend car and I said, ‘Y’all ain’t got nothing on qualifying at Darlington.’ And I was giving them just a little flavor of the difference between groups what you have to do in the car and I’m glad I told them somewhat of the truth because it ended up working out today. Just going over there and racing Legends cars and having fun. When is our writing competition (laughter)?”
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