When Bubba Wallace announced his return to Legend Car Racing after a five-year hiatus, it was believed that he would be able to get some joy by returning to the grassroots of his racing career. But it seems like 2024 is just not the year for him, as the 23XI Racing star struggled to keep up with the competition during the Cook Out Summer Shootout at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
Wallace is expected to compete in all 10 Legend Car events this summer, which will allow him to adapt and bounce back after the recent setbacks. Historically, he has been dominant in this style of racing, but he acknowledged that he and his team were caught off-guard by the recent trends in racing in the series.
Bubba Wallace is hoping for a turnaround in the upcoming events
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Wallace, piloting the No. 76 Legend Car in the Pro Division, could only manage a P11 finish out of the 17 entries. It was not the ideal result considering his background racing the Legend Cars. In fact, Wallace started his motorsports journey by dominating the circuits in the series. In 2005, he won 35 of the 48 Bandolero Series races. However, when he decided to return to one of his favorite series, he quickly realized he was far from competing for wins as he did back in the day.
Reflecting on his recent shortcomings and surprises, Wallace said, “Geez, I thought we were gonna show up and be competitive, but that’s far from the truth. The cars are totally different. It has been fun; I will retract that statement earlier. It has been fun, but it’s been getting frustrating really quick. Motor, tires, everything else is somewhat the same, but they drive just totally different. So it’s been fun trying to figure that out.”
This wasn’t exactly a dream return for him in the series that he expected, but Wallace is optimistic about his chances of a comeback. “I have never ran that bad in all my years of the shootout. So these are new memories created. Our team got some laps and hopefully got some things figured out. Yeah, we’ll see; we got seven more weeks to get it underway.”
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Speaking of improvement, perhaps he might also need to reflect on his Cup Series run, which certainly hasn’t been an improvement compared to his last year’s run.
New season, similar issues for the #23 team
During the 2023 season, Wallace had to wait until the very last race of the regular season at Daytona to know if he would make the playoffs. With a decent start to the 2024 season, it looked like the #23 team learned from their past mistakes. But they soon started becoming complacent, and now, with just seven races left in the regular season, Wallace’s playoff qualification hangs by a thread.
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His season went downhill with two back-to-back DNF finishes at Talladega and Dover. A P7 finish at Darlington was a rather bright spot in a dull run, but ever since Wallace just hasn’t been able to string a run of good results. His last five Cup starts did not have a single top-10 result; moreover, he was once again on the receiving end of the stick at New Hampshire, being wrecked for a DNF finish. Sitting 15th in the points standings, he certainly is at the risk of dropping out of the playoffs position.
The only positive for the #23 team is that they do have speed with their race car. All they need now is for Wallace to step up and start grinding out results before it is too late.