The Wide World of Dirt

The 2020 NASCAR season has been nothing short of a rollercoaster ride for everyone in the sport, but no driver knows that as well as Bubba Wallace.

The Richard Petty Motorsports driver started the season with three top-20 finishes, including an impressive run at Phoenix where his car sustained serious damage. He was undeterred, limping the car home to a 20th-place finish.

Just as Wallace and RPM started to build some momentum, the COVID-19 pandemic put a halt on the NASCAR season for over two months.

While some of the smaller teams like Premium Motorsports and Leavine Family Racing have not survived the losses incurred from the pandemic shutdown, RPM managed to stay afloat, and when engines re-fired at Darlington on May 17, the team kept their noses clean.

Another top-20 finish during the second leg of the Darlington doubleheader led to a couple of gearbox failures at both of the Charlotte events. Obviously, those failures weren’t the only thing on Wallace’s mind.

On Memorial Day, Minneapolis Police murdered George Floyd, spawning a number of protests worldwide. Wallace, the only black driver in the Cup Series, used his voice to speak out against the unjust way that black people in America are treated by authorities.

(Courtesy of Associated Press/Brynn Anderson)

Despite his courage in speaking out, many “fans” took this as an affront and chose to demonize Wallace. I would post a tweet of his in this article to show you the awful things people say to him online, but I don’t think anyone should have to be subjected to that level of filth.

This outrage directed toward the third-year Cup driver grew when he ran a Black Lives Matter car at the Martinsville night race in June only hours after NASCAR announced a ban of the Confederate flag, a ban which Wallace actively called for days before during a CNN appearance.

This was followed by the infamous noose incident that took place in the Talladega garage area.

A rope pull for Wallace’s garage was found to be tied in the style of a noose by one of his crew members. The rope was then reported by the crew member to NASCAR brass, who immediately called the police to make sure that Wallace, who had been incredibly vocal against the Confederate flag that week, wasn’t the target of a hate crime at the Alabama racetrack.

Luckily, there was no hate crime directed at Wallace, as the rope pull had been fashioned that way since October 2019. It was just an awful coincidence, especially considering the other 1700 rope pulls NASCAR utilizes weren’t fashioned in that way.

This didn’t stop racists (including the President of the United States) from comparing this situation to the Jussie Smollet incident from early 2019 where the actor fabricated a hate crime to save his role on Empire. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, however, Wallace wasn’t even allowed to enter the garage area that day.

While Bubba battled with racism off the track, his performance on the track dramatically improved after his dual DNFs at Charlotte.

Wallace recorded seven top-15s in the next 10 races, including two top-10s during that stretch to bring his total on the season to three, equaling his career high from his rookie campaign in 2018.

For a team of RPM’s caliber, 11 top-20s at the halfway point of the season is on-par with what Wallace’s predecessor, Aric Almirola, was doing in the car with more funding and better equipment.

(Courtesy of John Bazemore/Associated Press/Shutterstock)

Since then, Wallace’s performance has seemingly dipped as he has only racked up two more top-20 finishes in the last 10 races, though one of them was a top-5 and the other was a top-10.

Numbers don’t tell the whole story as Wallace was running in 8th on the final lap of the Daytona Road Course event before Joey Logano drove through Wallace and Alex Bowman going into turn one, spinning Wallace and relegating him to a 25th-place points finish.

What would have been a great start to Wallace’s sponsorship deal with Doordash turned into a day where Wallace had to endure endless ridicule on social media for his lackluster finish.

When the series returned to Daytona for the regular season finale, Wallace was about 4.75 miles from locking himself into the playoffs as he made a daring three-wide move on the high side to take the lead coming out of the tri-oval with two laps to go.

Due to contact with Joey Logano and William Byron, Wallace pitted from the lead under caution, sending him to 18th place for the NASCAR overtime restart. Wallace persevered, finishing 5th for his first top-5 of the season and his fifth top-10.

Wallace and RPM announced this past week that they were parting ways at the end of the 2020 season, and the moment appears to be bittersweet.

Wallace clearly outperforms his equipment week-in and week-out, and RPM, even with the sponsorship money their driver brings in, are still a year or two away from competing every week.

Wallace signed deals with Beats by Dre, Doordash, Cash App, Kingsford Charcoal, and Columbia Sportswear since June, which all told, brings his sponsorship value into the $15-20 million range, per Adam Stern.

With multiple rides open next year and some wild cards in the silly season market, Wallace has a number of tough decisions ahead of him, but he still has nine more races in Richard Petty’s famous 43 car. Hopefully, he can deliver them a win before the year wraps up.