By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service
INDIANAPOLIS — On Sunday at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Bubba Wallace took a giant step toward stardom.
As the NASCAR Cup Series drivers lined up for the first of two overtimes, however, the script wasn’t trending in the direction of a Wallace victory in the Brickyard 400.
The driver of the No. 23 Toyota had been cruising toward the most important triumph of his career when the deus ex machina in the form of sudden rainfall intervened with four laps left.
NASCAR was forced to stop the race, and expectations for the outcome changed as suddenly as the rain had come.
The script would read as follows: Rain wipes out Wallace’s 3.5-second lead with four laps left. Kyle Larson, lining up second to Wallace’s outside, uses his superior speed and race craft to pull ahead on the restart and win his fourth race of the season, leaving Wallace bitterly disappointed.
But Wallace flipped the script in a scenario that required two overtime restarts. Twice he held his own against Larson down the frontstretch and used the advantage of the inside lane to edge ahead in the first two corners.
Short on fuel after pitting on Lap 119 of 168, Wallace had enough left for a long, joyful burnout after beating Larson to the finish line to secure the third and most significant victory of his career.
“Bubba did a really good job, and his team did a great job executing their strategy to get that track position,” said Larson, who won last year’s race at the Brickyard. “So, congrats to them, and really, really cool to win here.”
After the race, Wallace’s crew chief, Charles Denike, fiercely defended his driver’s ability.
“Bubba’s a superstar,” Denike asserted. “That’s what we do. We win. We’re here to win. We came and won. I’m proud of him.”
Perhaps the rain was a blessing in disguise, given that restarts require instinct, muscle memory and split-second decision making with little time for reflection. Before the rain came, Wallace had been turning laps with bouts of intermittent self-doubt gnawing at his psyche.
“I’ll say those last 20 laps there was ups and downs of telling myself, ‘You’re not going to be able to do it.’ I hate that I’m that way… I think that’s my biggest downfall. We’re all human, and we’re all super hard on ourselves. You guys know how hard I am on myself.
“At the same time, I was combatting, and I’m like, ‘(Freaking) right, we can do this.’ It was kind of like the angel and devil on your shoulder. It wasn’t all negative. But to even have that thought, it’s like, ‘Man, come on, focus.’
“That all went away on the restarts, because it was time to really focus and get the job done. Yeah, just still working out those kinks and growing as a person.”
Denny Hamlin, co-owner of Wallace’s 23XI Racing Camry, has seen that growth up close, and he traced Wallace’s progress to the birth of his son Becks last September.
“It just seems like for me something changed mid last year,” said Hamlin, who finished third Sunday in the No. 11 Toyota he drives for Joe Gibbs Racing. “You can relate it to having a child or whatever, but something happened mid last year where I saw a change in attitude that then changed work ethic.
“What I’m hoping he takes from this is that hard work pays off. It really does pay off. Hopefully, we see more of this.”
Naysayers will note that Wallace ended a 100-race losing streak with the win at the Brickyard. They’ll point to one-hit wonder Paul Menard, whose only Cup victory in 471 starts came at Indy in 2011.
In Wallace’s case, however, the victory has a different feel, perhaps as the jumping-off point for bigger and better achievements. After all, the list of past Brickyard winners is heavily populated with current and future NASCAR Hall of Famers.
Like his car at the end of Sunday’s race, Wallace almost certainly has more fuel in his tank.
