NASCAR: Should Bubba Wallace be a bit concerned?

Bubba Wallace may have had a rocky start to the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series season, but his situation isn’t all that terrible when it comes to the playoffs.

Four full-time NASCAR Cup Series drivers have not finished a single one of the 2021 season’s first 10 races in the top 15.

Three of those drivers are two drivers who you’d expect to be on this list; two Rick Ware Racing drivers. In fact one, Petty Ware Racing’s Cody Ware, isn’t even eligible for Cup Series points. The other two, StarCom Racing’s Quinn Houff and Rick Ware Racing’s Josh Bilicki, are last (31st and 32nd place, respectively) among full-time drivers in the point standings with top finishes of only 24th and 23rd, respectively.

The fourth driver, however, is a driver who set a goal to win multiple races this season amid a switch to a brand new team, a team that have a technical alliance with Joe Gibbs Racing, one of the powerhouse organizations of the sport.

Bubba Wallace is the only driver other than Ware, Houff and Bilicki who competes full-time yet has not finished a single race inside the top 15.

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Wallace entered the 2021 season as one of the most hyped yet scrutinized drivers in the series amid his move to the Michael Jordan and Denny Hamlin-owned 23XI Racing. After three seasons with Richard Petty Motorsports, he opted to move on for what many considered his best opportunity yet.

It has proven to be his best opportunity yet. However, he has yet to truly take advantage of it, and suffice it to say that a Joe Gibbs Racing-aligned team has no business keeping company, in any statistical measure, with only a Rick Ware Racing duo and a StarCom Racing driver.

However, things may not be as dire as they seem for the 27-year-old Mobile, Alabama native as we approach the halfway mark of the 26-race regular season.

Sure, there has been a ton of disappointment. The #23 Toyota was among the best two cars at Daytona International Speedway for the season-opening Daytona 500 and at Talladega Superspeedway this past Sunday for the GEICO 500. It ended up crashing out of the former (officially 17th place) and finishing in 19th at the latter.

The worst part? Those two results are actually his fourth and fifth best finishes of the year so far, both exceeding his average finish of 21.3 despite the fact that he has only one DNF.

Yet through all of that, Wallace has somehow managed to keep himself inside the top 20 in the point standings, where he has never finished before, and he finds himself just 33 points below the playoff cut line.

Wallace has said that he and the team are actually exceeding expectations, based on some of the talks they have had within the organization, despite the fact that they haven’t shown the pace to meet that goal of at least two wins, barring an upset superspeedway victory at Daytona International Speedway in August or at Talladega Superspeedway in October.

But that could be a good thing as well. The fact that Wallace is only 33 points below the playoff cut line despite not yet having a top 15 finish coupled with the fact that the team are still making improvements with plenty of room to grow could actually be perceived as quite encouraging.

There are currently eight drivers within 38 points of one another for the final points positions in the playoffs, and only one of them has won a race within the last four seasons.

So it’s not as if Wallace and the team trying to dig themselves out of a huge hole like you might expect, given their lack of a top 15 finish coupled with the fact that only the top 16 drivers make the playoffs, and it’s not as if they have to be world-beaters to move up the standings, either.

Wallace is actually already ahead of many drivers who were expected to be contenders themselves this season, including three of the four Stewart-Haas Racing drivers, and those three drivers have a combined seven top 15 results.

So while it’s Wallace and the two full-time Rick Ware Racing drivers who have the worst best finishes of the season through 10 races, it’s by no means time to panic for the driver of the #23 Toyota.

Wins and/or a playoff berth may not come in 2021 like he would have wanted, but this is still as close as he has ever been to either one, and the potential is certainly still there to get closer and closer.

The 11th race of the 2021 season is the Buschy McBusch Race 400 at Kansas Speedway, where Wallace has a top finish of 18th place and an average finish of 28.0 in six starts. Fox Sports 1 is set to broadcast this race live this afternoon beginning at 3:00 p.m. ET.