Bubba Wallace reveals what his wife told him before Brickyard 400 win

Over the past four years, Bubba Wallace was used to sitting on the bubble of the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs. So was his wife, Amanda, and she wasn't too happy to see her husband slipping as the 2025 regular season waned. 

An incident in Chicago with Alex Bowman left Wallace two points above the cut line with seven races left in the regular season — a far cry from where he was in early June when he had a 54-point advantage. 

"After Chicago, it was unfortunate how that played out," Wallace said in a news conference at Iowa Speedway on Saturday. "All of my doing. My wife was very upset with me. It was kind of an eye-opening deal. She basically said, 'get your sh-- together, [because] I don't want to see you in that spot that you've been in so many years.

I said, okay, I'll go win Indy." 

Wallace's victory at Indianapolis puts him in unfamiliar territory this late in the regular season. His previous two career wins came during the playoffs in seasons where he was not a participant. Wallace had to point his way into the postseason in nail-biting fashion in 2023 and missed out heartbreakingly in 2024. 

This year, no such postseason stress will fall on the 31-year-old driver. It's safe to say that after living life on the playoff cut line for so many years, he'll enjoy being off the hook over the final four weeks of the regular season.