NASCAR insiders react to Bubba Wallace narrowly missing playoffs

Bubba Wallace missed the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs, and two insiders have a lot to say about it. Jeff Gluck and Jordan Bianchi of The Athletic shared their thoughts on Wallace and revealed what he needs to do in 2025.

“Definitely disappointing for him not to make the playoffs. Your teammate (Tyler Reddick) wins a regular-season championship,” Gluck said on The Teardown podcast. “He’s 12th in points. Respectable and he would have made it had there not been two winners in the last two weeks of the regular season. Unfortunate, but you have to expect it. I think for Bubba Wallace, they struggled to put it all together. They got it going late. They found speed and he could very well win a race before the season’s over, but unfortunately, it’s too little too late, and you got to win.”

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Gluck later added, “Next year, I think Bubba’s just got to come out and just go don’t even worry about the points, just go for wins. His cars have the capability of winning, go for wins.”

Bianchi broke down why Wallace won’t compete for a Cup Series title. “One stage win this year. This team has not done a very good job of not just winning stages, they just haven’t done a very good job of getting stage points,” Bianchi said. “That has certainly added up. They had a stretch this year over nine races they had eight finishes outside the top 10. That’s not going to cut it.

Bubba Wallace reacts to missing playoffs

“…How he has ran as of late since going into the break, because had a great run in Indianapolis, has been great. You have to take this, though, this six-race stretch or whatever this is and you’ve got to do that over 26 races.”

After the Southern 500 at Darlington on Sunday, Wallace shared his reaction to missing the playoffs. “We got behind on adjustments. We were back and forth on our US Air Force Toyota Camry,” Wallace said. “A little too loose, a little too tight That caution with a couple laps on tires where we stayed out, I don’t know if that was the deciding factor. We just got so tight there and got back there in traffic, a spot we hadn’t been all day. I got caught up in someone else’s mess.”