Bubba Wallace has secured his first pole of the 2024 NASCAR season for the Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway, clearly signaling his readiness to compete fiercely for his place in the playoffs. Wallace, who finds himself on the bubble, aims to transform the pressure into performance as he enters this important race.
“21 points out with a ton of pressure and I think the pressure just switched. We’re not here to mess around,” Wallace said, according to Motorsport.com.
His journey to pole position did not come without reflection. Following a sub-par performance at Daytona, which he labeled as “unacceptable,” Wallace was boosted by a motivational message from 23XI Racing co-owner Michael Jordan, who texted: “The things you want more, cost me.”
Arriving at Darlington, Wallace showed up with an “open and calmer demeanor — more free and relaxing demeanor, but at the same time I don’t want to be messed with,” he said.
Bubba Wallace, driver of the #23 U.S. Air Force Toyota, speaks to the media after winning the pole award during qualifying for the NASCAR Cup Series Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway on August 31, 2024 in Darlington, South Carolina. He comments on the difficult race ahead of him that could give him a spot in the playoffs.
Meg Oliphant/Getty Images
This balance of calm confidence paid dividends, as his team and crew chief Bootie Barker optimized the car’s performance for a stellar qualifying run.
Wallace commended their collective work:
“Just everybody on the 23 car and everybody back at AirSpeed. Both cars just showing up with speed at Darlington for the Southern 500 is super cool. I’ve been close here I think once or twice in qualifying, so to finally pull it out, it’s like ‘Wow! We’ve got it!’ With all that being said, the elephant in the room — tomorrow is a whole different day and I’m excited to see what tomorrow offers.”
Quoting the challenges of Darlington’s track, Wallace explained:
“So today, I’ve determined that Darlington is probably one of the, if not the hardest places to qualify. Just the way you have to approach practice to the qualifying trim, it’s totally different. For example, Kansas the first couple of laps in practice you’re damn near wide open.
“In qualifying, you’re wide open, so it’s close. Here you’re finessing and practicing and then hey, good luck. It all goes back to JR [Houston] and our analytics group. They do a really good job of feeding us the right information that translates to on-track performance.”
He continued:
“Yeah, anything can happen we’ve seen. Look at last week, right. Anything can happen so we have to run our own race. It makes it a lot easier for us.”
In the face of stiff competition from other the likes of Carson Hocevar and Chase Briscoe, Wallace remains focused on delivering his best.
The significance of starting from the pole at Darlington cannot be overstated, given that the last driver to win from such a position was Dale Earnhardt in 1990. As Wallace enters this race, he and his team are driven by a singular goal:
“All I want is every single person (who is a) part of this team, including myself, is to go to bed tomorrow night saying: ‘We did whatever we could. We did all we could.’ And maybe it was good enough, maybe it wasn’t so that’s the lottery ticket we’ll find out tomorrow after the race.”
