It was a huge season in 2023 for Bubba Wallace as he statically had the best season of his NASCAR Cup career. Wallace reached the NASCAR playoffs for the first time and even qualified for the round of 12.
A career year for @BubbaWallace. ? pic.twitter.com/t9LmxwL5uw
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) December 18, 2023
23XI Racing made many strides this past season, including the addition of Tyler Reddick, who won twice. The Michael Jordan-Denny Hamlin-owned team has quickly become a major player in NASCAR.
Wallace was consistently fast, as his qualifying efforts showed, yet even with it being his best season thus far, there was still something meaningful missing from it. He failed to find victory lane, which is why he is down on himself despite all the success he had.
Wallace told NASCAR.com in a recent interview reflecting on 2023 that it "bugs the hell" out of him that he didn't get a win.
"Everybody I see in the industry the last couple days have come up to me and continued to remind me how good the season was, and it is when you peel back the layers and look at it," Wallace said. "We checked a lot of boxes, but I don't know if it's just me being young and hungry, but I got zero wins. So that bugs the hell out of me. But yeah, I mean, we made a good run, proud of the efforts from the team. It was a really, really good year. I'm so excited to ... not get it started yet because I'm enjoying the downtime, but I'm excited for the next one to start."
Reddick and Wallace should be in for an exciting 2024, as both showed they could be the two cars battling at the end of races for multiple wins at several different types of tracks. Reddick has been a huge positive for Wallace's growth at tracks he has struggled at in the past, such as road courses. Will another season at 23XI with Reddick as teammate allow Wallace to break through? One thing is for sure, he would feel a lot better about himself if it does.
