{"id":18454,"date":"2018-06-01T17:18:54","date_gmt":"2018-06-01T22:18:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/?p=18454"},"modified":"2018-06-01T17:18:54","modified_gmt":"2018-06-01T22:18:54","slug":"an-optimistic-bubba-wallace-returns-to-pocono","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/2018\/06\/01\/an-optimistic-bubba-wallace-returns-to-pocono\/","title":{"rendered":"An optimistic Bubba Wallace returns to Pocono"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service<\/em><\/p>\n

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – As Bubba Wallace<\/strong> prepared to make his first ever Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series<\/a> start last June at Pocono Raceway, he remembers being hyper-aware of trying to do everything “right”.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Darrell Wallace Jr., driver of the #43 STP Chevrolet, practices for the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series STP 500 at Martinsville Speedway on March 24, 2018 in Martinsville, Virginia. (Photo by Brian Lawdermilk\/Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

A highly-regarded NASCAR competitor himself as he moved up through the sport\u2019s ranks, the then 23-year old was hopeful that a solid showing in his four big-opportunity starts filling in for Richard Petty Motorsports injured driver Aric Almirola would possibly result in a fulltime Cup job in 2018. And it has.<\/p>\n

A year later, Wallace returns to Pocono again in the famous Petty car \u2013 now his own No. 43 Chevrolet – able to vividly recall the emotions of that first race.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember just telling myself not to do anything stupid and mess us up,” Wallace said smiling Friday, just prior to opening practice for Sunday\u2019s Pocono 400 (at 2 p.m. ET on FS1, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).<\/p>\n

\u201cKnowing that it was kind of a tryout session because I didn\u2019t have anything else after that.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\nhttp:\/\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/MENCS_PR1_Wallace_060118.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

\u201cNow, knowing that for sure I\u2019m racing all year long, my name is on the car this time and it\u2019s my guys and my team. So, I\u2019m excited about that. I think that just helps out the confidence level so much.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom the start of the season, I feel like I\u2019ve gotten better and better in the car, trying to give better feedback and trying to be a better racer and a better driver and give guys respect and earn that respect, too. So, it all comes with it. You learn something new every day. So, I\u2019m excited to see what\u2019s on the plate for this weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a full plate for Wallace, who is in a super tight Sunoco Rookie of the Year battle with 20-year old Hendrick Motorsports driver William Byron. And it\u2019s been an emotional learning curve at times \u2013 right from the green flag of the season-opening Daytona 500, NASCAR\u2019s biggest race of the year.<\/p>\n

Wallace, 24, finished runner-up in his Daytona 500 debut, setting the stage for what he expected to be a solid year. However, that amazing start forced him to remind himself at times that this was still a learning situation of many first-time this-and-that\u2019s. The races were longer, the season was longer and the competition level was top-notch \u2013 he was in the big leagues now. And it is a different game.<\/p>\n

Since the Daytona result, Wallace scored another top 10 \u2013 an eighth-place finish at Texas Motor Speedway. In the six races since Texas, he\u2019s had three top-20s \u2013 all 16th-place finishes on a wide assortment of tracks from short track (Bristol, Tenn.), to superspeedway (Talladega, Ala.) to 1.5-miler (Charlotte).<\/p>\n

To be fair, even veteran drivers have been scratching their heads, considering the 13-race season has been dominated by Ford\u2019s Kevin Harvick, who has five wins and Toyota\u2019s Kyle Busch, who has four. Outside of those two drivers, each team feels a certain urgent need to catch-on and catch-up.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re still trying to figure out some things on that forefront,” Wallace allowed. \u201cI think from the OEM standpoint as well, we all see it as a big picture. We need to step it up, for sure.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we\u2019re missing a little bit on the new body. We\u2019re trying each and every day to figure out stuff. The alliance of RCR, they\u2019re trying stuff as well, so our debriefs are going in the right direction, I feel like. We\u2019re all talking about the same things we need to fix. It\u2019s not like I\u2019m fighting one problem and everybody else is fighting something totally opposite. Nine times out of 10, we usually say the same things.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, we have some areas that we can work on and I think that will propel us to better finishes. We\u2019ll see. You never know. As soon as you find something that works, you\u2019ve still got 10 things to catch-up on in this sport. It\u2019s a humbling and demanding sport. We\u2019ll just keep plugging away and keep getting after it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wallace finished 26th in that Pocono Cup debut last summer and improved his showings with each of the three races afterward, culminating with an 11th-place finish at Kentucky Speedway. There are good vibes here at Pocono for Wallace and he\u2019ll take them as he starts the summer push to qualify for NASCAR\u2019s Playoffs.<\/p>\n

\u201cLooking back, last weekend was a solid weekend for us,” Wallace said. \u201cIt\u2019s little things that are taking our program to the next level. Focusing in on races like that is what we need to do. It was a decent points day for us, and we are closing up on some guys in front of us.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe still have a lot of work to do to get inside the top 16, but I\u2019m looking forward to kind of shifting gears and getting to the high gear here for the second part of the season and make that final push.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – As Bubba Wallace prepared to make his first ever Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series start last June at Pocono Raceway, he remembers being hyper-aware of trying to do everything “right”. A highly-regarded NASCAR competitor himself as he moved up through the sport\u2019s ranks, the then 23-year […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18456,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[414,16,605,252],"class_list":["post-18454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nascar","tag-bubba-wallace","tag-nascar","tag-pocono-400","tag-pocono-raceway"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/MS-MENCS-Wallace-032418.jpg?fit=3159%2C2106&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7hzTZ-4NE","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18454"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18454\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18458,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18454\/revisions\/18458"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}