Bubba Wallace gets emotional reflecting on life, career after impressive Nashville performance

Bubba Wallace finished sixth at Nashville, which was big for him after he suffered three consecutive finishes outside the top 30. The finish at Nashville helped Wallace strengthen his position in the playoff standings with just 11 races remaining in the regular season. And what made the Nashville finish great for the Alabama native was he was hit with the penalty early in the race, which put him a lap down.

Looking at Bubba Wallace’s 2025 season

A big reason for Wallace’s success this season is getting off to a fast start. After a P29 finish at the Daytona 500, Wallace earned a P9 finish at Atlanta the following week. A few weeks later, the 31-year-old earned back-to-back P3 finishes at Homestead and Martinsville before finishing eight at Talladega in late April.

“The statistics don’t do it justice. The eye test, to me, says that Bubba is having a better year,” Dale Earnhardt Jr. proclaimed on Dale Jr. Download in April. “Bubba always, in my mind, before this year, Bubba had that handful of tracks where, ‘Okay, he could have a good run here. He does have some history of running good at Kansas, Talladega, Daytona,’ you know, he has certain places where it’s like, ‘Alright, not surprised to see him win or run in the top five.’ Now he’s doing it almost every week. Now he’s competitive, and matching, if not beating, his teammate [Tyler] Reddick at times.

“More consistently, Reddick was outrunning him every week. But now they’ve had a crew chief change. Some new ideas, new energy, new excitement around what could be. Sometimes you can change the crew chief, not even putting a better, smarter guy in there, but it’s just the change. You just need a reason to be excited.”