NASCAR: Bubba Wallace is in an interesting position entering 2022

Bubba Wallace is set to enter his fifth season as a full-time NASCAR Cup Series driver, but it is set to be his first season with a teammate.

It certainly didn’t take long for the Denny Hamlin and Michael Jordan-owned NASCAR Cup Series season to expand their one-car operation to a two-car operation.

23XI Racing entered the Cup Series for the first time last year with Bubba Wallace as the driver of the #23 Toyota, and they later confirmed that they would be adding the #45 Toyota for the 2022 season.

Kurt Busch, who was due to lose his ride at Chip Ganassi Racing with the team having been acquired by Trackhouse Racing Team, was named the driver of the #45 Toyota.

There were some questions about this ride at first, particularly because the team hadn’t secured a second charter when the announcement was formally made.

There were reports that they would acquire one of Front Row Motorsports’ two charters, but that deal fell through, leaving them in need of a charter several months after the confirmation of the 2004 champion.

But those concerns were finally put to bed earlier in the offseason when the team bought a charter from StarCom Racing after they shut down.

So for the first time ever, Wallace is set to have a teammate in the Cup Series.

Wallace made his Cup Series debut in 2017 as the replacement for Aric Almirola at Richard Petty Motorsports for four races, and when Almirola left the team to replace Danica Patrick at Stewart-Haas Racing, Wallace took over full-time in 2018. He stayed with the team through 2020 before landing at 23XI Racing for 2021.

23XI Racing do have a technical alliance with Joe Gibbs Racing, but the 2022 season is set to mark Wallace’s first true test against another driver in the exact same equipment.

This is a great opportunity for Wallace, considering who that teammate is: a former series champion who is riding a streak of eight consecutive winning seasons, which is the fourth longest active streak in the series, and a streak of nine consecutive playoff appearances, which is tied for the second longest active streak in the series.

On the flip side, this also means that Wallace can’t afford to have a bad season, because if he does, the critics will be louder than they have ever been before.

We’ve all heard the famous “We don’t sign checks for losers” quote from Jordan, and Wallace proved it by earning his first victory at Talladega Superspeedway in early October.

But we’ve all heard the talk: it was a rain-shortened race, it was a superspeedway race, and it was a playoff race — after he didn’t make the playoffs.

Can he win a full-length race not impacted by rain? Can he secure a top five finish in something other than a superspeedway race (or a fuel mileage race, a la Pocono Raceway)? Can he actually make the playoffs for the first time?

Those are all legitimate questions for the 28-year-old Mobile, Alabama native as he enters his second season with the relatively new and improving 23XI Racing team.

But with the arrival of Busch, the most important question will be this: how does he measure up? Because unlike his first four seasons, his fifth season should actually give us something of an answer.