SPEEDWAY, Ind. — “I appreciate every single one of you believing in me. It’s been a long [expletive] road.”
Bubba Wallace was right when he radioed that to his team after taking the checkered flag. It was a long road Wallace took to becoming a Brickyard 400 winner on Sunday afternoon at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
The driver of the No. 23 23XI Racing Toyota was in the midst of a 100-race winless streak in the NASCAR Cup Series. He won just twice in 276 prior starts. And the biggest doubter of Wallace lived within his own head.
On Sunday, Wallace the doubter didn’t win. Instead, Wallace the racer shut down the doubt and held off Kyle Larson — the defending Brickyard winner and 2021 Cup champion — on two overtime restarts to etch his name in Indianapolis history as the first Black driver to win a major race on the 116-year-old 2.5-mile oval.
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Those last 20 laps, though, forced the racer to silence the doubter.
“It was probably 20 laps of telling myself I‘m not going to be able to do it,” Wallace said Sunday. “So I have found my biggest problem, and that‘s this [pointing to his head]. If I could shut that off mentally, fully, we could do a lot more of this. …
“At the same time, I was combating, and I‘m like, [expletive] 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. Just still working out those kinks and growing as a person. It‘s just really cool to be sitting here in front of you guys, so I appreciate it.”
Wallace has always battled self-doubt. Noise — external and internal — has fueled him at times. At others, it has eaten at him. Denny Hamlin, team co-owner of 23XI Racing, saw those effects firsthand and admitted Sunday those self-detrimental moments over the years gave him pause.
“It was kind of a time where we were wrestling of like, man, do I want it worse than him or not?” Hamlin said. “Like, I can‘t make him want it. That‘s going to have to come from within.”
Hamlin and team co-owner Michael Jordan, the NBA legend, hired Wallace as the team’s first driver in 2021. One year later, they added a second team with NASCAR Hall of Famer Kurt Busch piloting the No. 45 Toyota before Tyler Reddick took over that ride in 2023. Those additions pushed Wallace further.
“We want to win,” Hamlin said. “We put a lot of resources into doing that. He‘s felt pressure. I think he‘s felt the pressure from not only me but Michael and everyone. You want to perform the best of your teammates. It just seems like for me, something changed (in the middle of) last year.”
Indeed, a lot has changed for Wallace in the last 12 months. In July 2024, Wallace was fined $50,000 for door-slamming Alex Bowman after the Chicago Street Race. Wallace called that fine “probably the best thing to happen to me” one week later, allowing reflection after a conversation with Kevin Harvick, who advised him to be the “fun-loving guy that I am.”
In late September, Wallace and his wife, Amanda, welcomed their first child, Becks, propelling Wallace into fatherhood. Professionally, he entered 2025 with Charles Denike, a new crew chief who hadn’t headed a Cup Series team before, after Wallace had built a strong but laid-back relationship with former crew chief Bootie Barker in the previous three-plus seasons.
That combination of life-altering moments triggered something in Wallace that changed his work ethic for the better. Hamlin took notice.
“His valleys weren‘t as low,” Hamlin said. “I think it seemed like on the bad days, he was able to compartmentalize that and then think about the positives versus ‘everything sucks all the time.’ That‘s a tough way to live. We‘re in a business where if you can win 5% of the time, you‘re a Hall of Famer. You‘re going to lose. This is a losing business, and you have to find happiness in some other way other than actually winning. (Former crew chief) Mike Ford told me that early in my career, and that was the best advice I‘ve ever been given. It‘s something that certainly needed to be told to Bubba that you‘ve got to find these little goals that you feel good about because it‘s tough out there.”
So, who is Bubba Wallace one year removed from what he once called the best thing to happen to him?
“A guy with a beautiful wife, a beautiful son, and just fortunate enough to be driving race cars,” Wallace said. “Putting family first — that‘s all that matters. Makes things easier. It gives you something to kind of focus onto. The racing stuff is kind of secondary now — and you have to go through a mental shift to say that, especially for me.
“I remember when Amanda and I first started dating. I was like, ‘Hey, racing is everything.’ I knew I made a mistake saying that. It took me all these years to realize, like, this isn‘t always going to be here, so I think it‘s better to enjoy the moments like this, but nothing can overcome the joy, the times that you have with your family at home in a private setting. Then you just so happen to be a race-car driver on Sundays. That‘s kind of how I look at it. I‘m enjoying life. I enjoy being here at the race track with all you guys. I say it about once a year to myself: I have a really cool [expletive] job. It‘s not even a job. A cool hobby. You guys are all living it with me, so it‘s cool.”
He remains very critical of himself, though. Reddick won the regular-season championship in 2024 and remains the team’s top driver in 2025, sitting higher in points (sixth to Wallace’s 10th) and boasting a better average finish (14.5 to Wallace’s 18.7). That weighed on Wallace throughout the season. Entering Sunday’s race, Wallace was still hovering at the elimination line of the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs — a spot he’s been in seemingly each of the last three years, triggering the thought: “Damn, dude. What is it? Is it me?”
“I‘m super hard on myself,” he said. “I see Tyler having a lot of success with the team, and you wonder like, ‘Man, how in the hell do they keep getting these opportunities?’ It‘s showing up. Charles says it best: Just keep believing in yourself, and he‘s never let me get off that path. Yes, I‘ll take a detour for a second, but it‘s not lingering. Throughout the weeks, it‘s like, man, here we are — I said it earlier — like playoff time again, we‘re getting close. But never got too far down a lonely road, if that makes sense, which I‘ve been in so many times. I‘m sure there‘s people in here that struggle with that, but you‘ve got to keep on pressing on.
Now, for the first time in his career, Wallace has won during the regular season. That victory erases any doubts that Wallace will compete in the 2025 postseason.
And maybe it doesn’t erase all the doubt inside Wallace’s mind. He’s working on it, but as his brain reminded him in the closing stages of Sunday’s Brickyard 400, the doubter still lingers. But this time, the racer shut him up and got to kiss the storied bricks in Indianapolis.
“In the last run, it‘s like, ‘You‘re going to give this away,’ ” Wallace said. “The other side was like, ‘You got this. You‘re about to show everybody why you belong here.’ And we did that.”
