(Photo: Wayne Riegle | The Podium Finish)
WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. — After Michael McDowell’s win at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Road Course, Bubba Wallace’s playoff pathway got a whole lot more complicated.
Wallace left Michigan International Speedway 58 points to the good and 15th on the playoff provisional grid. He didn’t earn any stage points at Indy and finished 18th while McDowell had a near-perfect 59-point day to knock Wallace down a spot on the playoff threshold. Now, Wallace is just 28 points above Daniel Suarez for the 16th and final spot.
Despite it all, he’s had the best season of his Cup Series career.
“We’ve shown a lot of improvements as a race team, as a 23 group, and really as a team as a whole,” Wallace said at Watkins Glen on Saturday. “But we still have been having some mistakes on my end, the pit crew’s end, on just the crew’s end that could cost us. So we got to clean those up. The teams that win the championship are usually the ones that have the least amount of mistakes throughout the year, so we’ve had our fair share.
“The Cup level is so tough, right? It can take you out, it can drain you, but you got to find the positives. You got to find the good light inside of it all.”
What murkies the playoff picture even more are the unknowns over the final two races of the regular season. After Watkins Glen International on Sunday, it’ll be a trip to Daytona International Speedway to finalize the playoff grid.
Wallace, however, is admittedly not the best road course racer. He’s trying to come into the second road course race in a row with a positive mindset.
“I’m excited to get on track and see, but when you get in the race, I’m like, I don’t know what happens,” Wallace said. “It’s just — I sit there and ride and wherever I start, I finish. Like the race craft — I got a lot of good people in my corner trying to help out, which is good and getting us better.
“I wasn’t very good at Darlington when I first started my Cup career, and I feel like I’ve gotten decent there. That’s more track time and putting in more work on the sim. The same shit I do for road courses and I don’t get any better. So I don’t know. I think part of it’s mindset. I’ve always said that I enjoyed road courses, I mean it’s fun when you’re out there by yourself doing stuff different, it’s fine. But as soon as you put a stopwatch down and have competition out there, it’s like ‘alright, now we’re back to competition, and I suck.'”
(Photo: Mitchell Richtymre | The Podium Finish)
In 25 career road course starts Wallace has a top five at Indianapolis Motor Speedway last year and a pair of top 10s. His average finish is 25th, 2.3 spots worse than his average spot and the worst of all track types.
Watkins Glen has been particularly difficult on the 29-year-old from Mobile, Alabama. His average finish is 27.8 and he’s never finished better than 23rd. Last year, he battled a suspension issue and came home 35th.
Wallace will be the first to tell you that he’s not expecting to win at The Glen, but he is trying all he can to maximize points.
“Just trying to have enough speed — enough speed makes your strategy calls a little bit easier,” Wallace explained. “We were 18th — I think we finished 11th in the first stage last weekend, we were just outside of getting a point. But you never know, that point could come down to the end. So I think having a little bit more speed, a little more pace in the race just to be able to call your strategy and maybe pull something instead of just running 20th and hoping for the best.”
Wallace will start 12th — his best career start on a road course. His boss, Denny Hamlin, is on the pole.
