Denny Hamlin is opening up about a “head-scratching” issue that’s going on with Bubba Wallace and his 23 car. On theActions Detrimental podcast, Hamlin shared his thoughts on Wallace earning a P10 finish at the Pocono Cup Series race.
“While it was a good points day for the 23, they’re still lacking pace,” Hamlin said. “I don’t know where that pace is. It’s head-scratching a little bit they just don’t have the pace. It seems like the other (Joe Gibbs Racing) or the 23XI Toyota’s have. But they’re finishing to their best ability on race day. That’s really really good.
“They’re executing well, that’s half the battle. The speed stuff, we can figure out and Bubba can figure out and the team can figure that out. They’re at least keeping themselves in the game when they do figure that out. If you would have been 53 (points) back with five to go, especially on Ross (Chastain), that’s going to be hard to make up. …The reason you need pace is you need stage points. You need to qualify well, you need stage points and then you need to finish in the top 10. I think he’s got one of those worked out, and that’s the finishing part. He’s finishing probably better than his pace would show. But I’ll tell you, he’s at least back in the game now. These things can go one way or another.”
Wallace is a member of 23XI Racing, co-owned by Hamlin and Michael Jordan. The P10 finish was big for Wallace as he’s now just27 points behind Chastain for the final playoff spot. Of course, if Wallace wins one of the next few regular season races, he automatically clinches a spot in the postseason.
Despite earning a top-10 finish Wallace expressed his frustration with the car after Sunday’s race. “It’s about points, so we didn’t capitalize on points, but (Ross Chastain) had a bad day, (Ty Gibbs) had a bad day. It was a nice rebound. Usually, it’s the opposite. We start really good and end up fading and giving up a lot track position. Here, we were able to call a good strategy and hang on. We just didn’t have the car,” Wallace said, via NBC Sports. “The 6 (Brad Keselowski) drove it down into (turn) one and I was going to race the heck out of him and I realized I was going to crash and he was going to keep going. It’s pretty eye-opening of how far we’re off. Going to have a good debrief tomorrow.
“All in all, I was trying to have fun the first stages, that’s what I said I was going to do. Was trying my butt off and here we are.”
On3’s Steve Samra contributed to this story.
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