INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Bubba Wallace climbed out of the No. 23 car Sunday, pumped his fists, found his family and savored every precious moment of a historic Brickyard 400 victory.
He deserved every minute of it.
The 31-year-old Wallace overcame a tenuous 18-minute rain delay, two tantalizing overtimes, fears about running out of fuel late and the hard-charging defending race champ, Kyle Larson, on back-to-back restarts to become the first Black driver to win a major race on Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s 2.5-mile oval. No Black driver has won the Indianapolis 500, and Formula 1 raced on the track’s road course.
“This one’s really cool,” Wallace said. “Coming off Turn 4, I knew I was going to get there — unless we ran out of gas. I was surprised I wasn’t crying like a little baby.”
His third career NASCAR Cup victory delivered Wallace’s first victory in the series’ four crown jewel events, the others being the Daytona 500, Coca-Cola 600 and Southern 500. It also snapped a 100-race winless streak that dated to 2022 at Kansas and locked up a playoff spot. His only other win came at Talladega in 2021.
The final gap was 0.222 seconds, but that was no measure of the consternation he faced.
Larson cut a 5.057-second deficit with 14 laps to go to about three seconds with six laps left as the yellow flag came out for the rain. The cars then rolled to a stop on pit lane with four laps remaining, forcing Wallace to think and rethink his restart strategy.
“The whole time I’m thinking are we going? Are we not?” he said. “I will say I leaned more towards ‘I know we’re going to go back racing. Be ready. Don’t get complacent here.”
Wallace made sure of it.
He beat Larson through the second turn on the first restart only to have a crash behind him force a second overtime, forcing his crew to recalculate whether they had enough fuel to finish the race or whether he needed to surrender the lead and refuel.
In Wallace’s mind, there was no choice.
“The first thing that went through my mind was, ‘Here we go again,’” he said. “But then I said, `I want to win this straight up. I want to go back racing.’ Here we are.”
He beat Larson off the restart again and pulled away, preventing Larson from becoming the race’s fourth back-to-back winner.
The victory also alleviated the frustration Wallace felt Saturday when he spent most of the qualifying session on the provisional pole only to see Chase Briscoe claim the No. 1 starting spot with one of the last runs in the session.
On Sunday, he made sure there was no repeat, providing an added boost to the 23XI Racing team co-owned by basketball Hall of Famer Michael Jordan and last week’s race winner, Denny Hamlin, as it continues to battle NASCAR in court over its charter status.
“Those last 20 laps there were ups and downs and I was telling myself ‘You won’t be able to do it,’” Wallace said. “Once I’d seen it was Larson, I knew he won here last year and he’s arguably the best in the field. So to beat the best, we had to be the best today.”
The other big race — the In-Season Challenge — went to Ty Gibbs, who had a better car than Ty Dillon in qualifying and on race day. Gibbs finished 21st o win the inaugural March Madness-like single-elimination tournament and collect the $1 million prize.
Dillon, a surprise championship round entrant after making the field as the 32nd and final driver, finished 28th.
“They brought me money guns and they jammed so I decided to take all the money and throwing it to the fans and they were all wrestling and fighting over it,” said Gibbs, who also received a title belt and a ring. “But it’s super cool. It’s a cool opportunity.”
Tire troubles
At different points, Austin Cindric and three-time Cup champion Joey Logano appeared to be in control of the race, but tire problems took them out of contention. Eric Jones also was knocked out of the race when his right front tire came off between Turns 3 and 4, sending him hard into the outside wall on Lap 91.
They weren’t the only drivers who made early exits.
Ross Chastain was the first out after just 18 laps when a tap from Michael McDowell sent Chastain’s car spinning into the third turn wall and caused heavy damage.
The others who were out before Lap 100 were Austin Dillon, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and Cody Ware.
Weathering the storm
Series officials were concerned enough about the threat of rain that they moved up the start time by 10 minutes. Fifteen minutes probably would have eliminated the rain delay.
But the threat of rain impacted the race long before the delay. Early in the second stage, some teams informed drivers rain was expected near the midway point and it seemed to increase the aggressiveness earlier in the race than expected.
Monster advice
Cookie Monster made it to the track Sunday, too. The beloved Sesame Street character, who served as the Brickyard’s grand marshal, attended driver introductions and took a handful of questions before the race and even offered some advice to the drivers.
“Don’t stop and ask for directions,” the furry blue character said.
Up next
Cup drivers will continue their brief Midwestern tour next Sunday when they race at Iowa.
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