Through the first five races of the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season, no driver had a better worst finish than 23XI Racing's Bubba Wallace, who finished all five races inside the top 11.
But the lack of a top five finish was always a question mark, and it made Wallace's position in second place in the point standings behind teammate Tyler Reddick feel unstable at best.
Add us as a preferred source on GoogleAnd after back-to-back poor results, it's beginning to come back to bite him.
Bubba Wallace plummets in NASCAR standings
Wallace was caught up in another driver's mess at Darlington Raceway and could only recover to finish 34th. Then at Martinsville Speedway, he triggered, intentional or not, an 11-car pileup by repeatedly running into the No. 77 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet of Carson Hocevar.
Ironically, it was Wallace, not Hocevar, who was knocked out of the race and scored just a single point with a 36th place finish.
The driver of the No. 23 Toyota now finds himself in a four-way tie for eighth place in the point standings, but due to the tiebreaker, he is last of those four drivers and thus scored in 11th.
Wallace's best finish of sixth place at Phoenix Raceway tied for the worst of the group with RFK Racing's Chris Buescher's sixth place finish at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, but Buescher was awarded 10th in points since his second best finish, a seventh place effort in the Daytona 500, is better than Wallace's eighth place performance at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
RFK Racing's Brad Keselowski owns the tiebreaker outright ahead of Hendrick Motorsports' Kyle Larson; Keselowski placed second at Darlington, while Larson placed third at Phoenix.
Wallace is still 48 points above the cut line, but what these past two weekends have shown are that being consistent and being consistently good are two different things.
Wallace's lack of a true top-tier result, even as he continues to lead the series in stage points, set him up for a rapid drop down the order in the event of a rough stretch of races, and that is exactly what he has experienced over the past two race weekends.
Can he right the ship at Bristol Motor Speedway?
The Food City 500 is scheduled to take place on Sunday, April 12, as the Cup Series has off this weekend due to Easter. Begin a free trial of FuboTV and don't miss Fox Sports 1's live coverage beginning at 3:00 p.m. ET!