Intentional or not, 23XI Racing's Bubba Wallace drove repeatedly into the No. 77 Chevrolet of Spire Motorsports' Carson Hocevar during the Cook Out 400 at NASCAR Cup Series race at Martinsville Speedway two Sundays ago, triggering an 11-car pileup that ultimately took Wallace (but ironically not Hocevar) out of the race.
One week after he was caught up in somebody else's mess and left staring at a season-worst 34th place finish, Wallace was scored in 36th with a DNF.
The driver of the No. 23 Toyota had been the series' most consistent driver through the season's first five races, finishing every race between sixth and 11th place. But after back-to-back rough outings, that lack of a true standout result is beginning to come back to bite him.
Wallace is in an eighth place tie with three other drivers in the point standings, after having been second behind teammate Tyler Reddick heading into the Darlington race, but Wallace is actually the fourth out of those four drivers in the tiebreaker (top finish, second best finish, etc.) and officially scored in 11th, 48 points above the playoff cut line.
Stage points keeping Bubba Wallace afloat
What has saved him has been his stage results, as even after failing to score in stage two at Darlington and scoring no stage points whatsoever for the first time this year at Martinsville, he is still the series' leader in stage points with 60.
On race results alone, Wallace is only tied for 15th in points with Spire Motorsports' Michael McDowell, who actually owns a top five finish, and those two are only one point ahead of Spire Motorsports' Daniel Suarez, who also owns a top five finish, in 17th.
Consistency is one thing, but being consistently good is another. Wallace was demonstrating the epitome of the former early on, but after two consecutive rough weekends, the lack of the latter has begun to come back to bite him.
Fortunately for him, the No. 23 team has run well this year overall, and that has translated to a nice points haul in stages one and two. Without that, he'd be a fringe playoff contender, even after starting the year with the best worst finish of any driver through five races.
Those 60 stage points have quite literally netted him a 47-point buffer he would not otherwise have, since he sits 48 points to the good, rather than just one.
Race number eight on the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series schedule did not take place this past weekend, as the series had off for Easter. The Food City 500 is set to be shown live on Fox Sports 1 from Bristol Motor Speedway starting at 3:00 p.m. ET. Start a free trial of FuboTV and catch all of the action!