Bubba Wallace cracks joke at Michael Jordan, feels good about his car at COTA

Right now, Bubba Wallace is feeling a little loose as his No. 23 Toyota Camry is flying around the track at the Circuit of the Americas. NASCAR is going road course racing, and Michael Jordan is in town to take it all in.

Having MJ as a team owner is great for NASCAR. 23XI Racing is a team that can attract new fans and longtime race fans as well. Who doesn’t want to be on the same team as the GOAT?

Bubba Wallace has been fast in practice at COTA. His road course racing is really coming around and improving in the last couple of seasons. Wallace talked about his car on the FS1 broadcast.

“I don’t know if I call it comfortable, I don’t know if I call it I feel good,” Wallace told Josh Sims. “My hands are really busy and I kind of do that everywhere we go to, start the morning off, they call it nervous wheel and then it usually slows down throughout the weekend so I just need to do that faster.

“Proud of the effort our Mobil 1 Toyota Camry is really good, I think. It’s just so hard to know, if we were at Kansas I’d be like ‘Hey we’re really good I feel comfortable.’ But I feel good with the speed, really proud of the work we put in. Really proud of myself committing to it. Put in five hours almost … of prepping here for COTA and it’s paying off, so appreciate everybody back at AirSpeed, everybody at 23XI just grinding trying to get our road course program better. Really leaning on Tyler to figure out where we need to be, so yeah it’s good. It’s practice, it doesn’t pay any bills, neither does qualifying. Gotta make it last and run all the laps tomorrow.”

Then, Bubba Wallace decided to get a little jab in at his team owner.

“No surprise, hell I hadn’t seen him in forever, thought he quit the team,” Wallace joked. “I thought Denny was majority owner. So, nice to see him here.”

Today could be a big day for Wallace. He will make the final round of qualifying today. THat is not common for Wallace on these road courses. He has struggled, specifically at COTA, in the past.

With the work he has done in the offseason, working with Tyler Reddick and the entire 23XI team, those improvements have come quickly. The Next Gen car is made for this kind of racing, but it still takes a driver to get the car around the track. In his career, Wallace only has two top-10 finishes on road courses.

Bubba Wallace might be on his way to a career-best for a road course. Then again, like he said, practice and qualifying don’t pay the bills. Race day does.