"If you're the 23 car in Bubba, you've got to make those moves. You don't have a choice, you're trying to win that race"- Tony Stewart The dynamic best friend duo of Bubba Wallace and Ryan Blaney led a combined 82 of 196 laps at Talladega this past weekend with 2 of the strongest cars all race long.  Pack racing at Talladega. Image: Twitter, original unknown Bubba Wallace and the 23XI team brought a lead car, the 23 was the only car that could pull the 3rd lane up top and to the lead. The big problem with the 23 all afternoon was that the car got too light when being pushed. The 12 of Blaney on the other had got to the lead 9 different times for a race high 47 laps led.
So it was only fitting that two of the best superspeedway racers in the field got together to push each other to a potential win at the very end. But when Wallace took the the white flag with his best friend behind him, one of them was going to win that race. Going through 1 & 2, Blaney went low to pass Wallace and was blocked. Wallace's car got into the apron and lose, Blaney came up, blocked again but it made the 23 too light and Wallace went around and it was all over. Lots of fans all over social media have criticized Bubba for making the moves that he made and many to Blaney as well, but guest broadcaster 3x Champion Tony Stewart called the incident on a replay. "If you're the 23 car in Bubba, you've got to make those moves. You don't have a choice, you're trying to win that race." "This is just of those no fault scenarios where everybody did exactly what they had to to give themselves the best opportunity to win this race."0 Clint Bowyer in the booth backed him up agreeing also adding on behalf of Blaney, "Absolutely, and in the flip side of that if you're Blaney, you have to make that. It's the last lap, you have to go." Post race, Wallace received more criticism while showing understandable visual frustration after throwing his Hans device to the ground. Blaney showed his displeasure in post race interviews "In my mind... You can't block three times... I'm not blaming anybody." Blaney was credited with 2nd and Wallace with 28th. By: Tom Luttermoser
0 Comments
 Bristol Dirt Race. Image: Ricky Stenhouse Jr Fb The dirt surface at Bristol is a completely different race track than we are used to of course. So, naturally, that lends itself to some different names at the top of the pilon. This past weekend was no different, here are some of the drivers that had some fantastic runs on the dirt!
Todd Gilliland Gilliland scored his 4th career Top-10 finish at Bristol with his 8th-place finish. Bristol represented the second Top-10 finish of the season for Todd who is having a better sophomore season so far than his rookie season despite being told he would not be full-time in his #38 car. Ricky Stenhouse Jr Your reigning Daytona 500 champion is having a far better start to his 2023 season as well with the dirt racer's 500 win and his 3rd Top-10 finish of the season so far. Stenhouse Jr netted a 4th place finish and scored 33 points to help keep him in the running for the playoffs starting in August pending as many winners as we had last season. Justin Haley Justin Haley announced his engagement Tuesday morning, so congratulations. He did that following up his 9th career Top-10 finish in the Cup Series. Haley was up front all night long scoring 4 Stage Points on top of his 6th place final spot. Bubba Wallace Bubba has had a shit season, there's no way around that. He sits 24th in the points and has only 1 Top-5 this season at Vegas. But Bubba without a doubt showed a great improvement on the dirt after winning his Heat race and then finishing a respectable 12th and an average running position of 13.11. Bubba's previous 2 finishes on dirt were 27th and 28th. Austin Dillon Outside of being in contention late in the Daytona 500, the eldest of the Dillon brothers showed commanding speed all night long on the dirt. Austin won his Dirt race and followed that up with a 3rd place finish. Dillon scored 18 Stage Points and battled for the Top 5 all night long with the second-best average running position of 4.26. Ty Gibbs Ty is on a roll this season. In his first 4 starts of the season, he finished an average of 22.75. The last 4, all Top-10s with an average of 9.25 after finishing 10th on the dirt. Gibbs had an average running position of 19.82 but greatly improved that run with his 5th Career Top-10 in just 19 starts. J.J. Yeley JJ had one hell of a starting position of 3rd for his Rick Ware Racing #15 Ford Mustang finishing 20th. JJ ended up scoring his best career finish since 2019's Summer Daytona race. His finishing position improved 3.91 positions over his average running position even running 45 laps in the Top-15. By: Tom Luttermoser  Wallace during driver intros @ CotA. Image: 23XI Twitter Bubba Wallace had a horrible day during Sunday's EchoPark Automotive Grand Prix 250. Wallace slid into the rear of the 5 of Kyle Larson on lap 10 putting a very early end to his day. Wallace's contact with the 5 car led to a broken toe link and a broken oil line which may have been the cause for the seeming lack of brakes on the #23. Even the broadcasters pointed out something was likely wrong with the breaks on the 23 as he entered the turn way too fast.
When Wallace brought his MoneyLion #23 Camry into the garage and after exiting his car showed immediate displeasure with the outcome. Wallace smacked his car's buckled-up hood hard enough that the cameras nearby picked up the sound of the impact. During his interview with Fox Sports, Wallace voiced his frustration pretty clearly. "Just trying my hardest not to go down the slippery slope of self-doubt here. Two weeks in a row of making rookie mistakes 6 years into Cup, need to be replaced." So Who Could Replace Him? So let's amuse the people who think this is a reality. We all know he's not going anywhere anytime soon. But it doesn't hurt to have fun and speculate. So, who could replace Wallace in a fast, closing-in on top-tier Toyota? I've got an opinion on this of course. 1.) John Hunter Nemechek.
2.) Corey LaJoie.
3.) Denny Hamlin.
4.) Unknown Road Course Ringer.
By: Tom Luttermoser  Credit: DARLINGTON, SOUTH CAROLINA - SEPTEMBER 03: Bubba Wallace, driver of the #23 McDonald's Toyota, exits pit road during the NASCAR Cup Series Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway on September 03, 2023 in Darlington, South Carolina. (Photo by James Gilbert/Getty Images) Fans for several years now have hated the very idea of Wallace in the sport. Now naturally this stems from 35,000 different reasons that each individual fan will explain to you in nauseum on why they hate the guy. Wallace took Rowdy's place as the most "hated" driver in the sport roughly about the time of the Talladega race in 2020. (I'm not going into this as we all know the who, what, when and where.)
But of course, Wallace has a TON of racist haters who don't even try to hide why they dislike him on social media. You've got the racists, the "But Muh Flag" crowd, the "he tried to murder Larson" crowd, the "he's a crybaby" crowd, the noose crowd and so on and so forth. So, with all of this hatred, why is it that we see Mr. Bubba Wallace plastered all over social media or NASCAR media? It's actually such a super simple answer and it stuns me that more people don't understand it. A lot of people site that NASCAR is trying to "jam him down our throats" and, well, yeah. They look at the numbers, and this quick article will tell you exactly why that is. It is all stemmed to 1 word "Media." Media is all about 1 thing, attention. With social media and websites it's all about getting the most Engagements (people liking, emojis or sharing), the most impressions (how many people see the content, due to the algorithms it's the stuff that gets the most engagements that gets seen the most) and lastly and most importantly (to us with a website), the most website visits. Here's the thing, most of us really don't care if the responses are positive or negative as long as it is bringing in the eyeballs. Where are we going to get the most attention? Prime example, I wrote an article and did a sit down interview with Howie DiSavino III a few months back. Everyone said I did a pretty good job at it despite it being my first time doing so. Less than 100 people even liked the posts much less opened or read it. Now to the opposite, I can go onto any Facebook NASCAR Page and simply post "Bubba Wallace." I'll receive 200 angry Emojis, 100 laughing emojis and anywhere between 20-50+ negative comments. No information shared, no picture, not 1 word.. just his name. And I have, I've done this dozens of times just to test the waters, and god forbid I say something positive about the man. (224 angry emojis just for posting a pic of him and his new wife saying congratulations.) So, to me, someone who needs to look at the total number of impressions and engagements per post you'd think this would be all I post. Well, at Seriously Fast Media we refuse to do click-bait so we don't. So why? Why do we constantly see Wallace everywhere? The answer is super simple thanks to the haters, It gets impressions... and it gets engagements. They are single handedly fueling what they dislike seeing. To make my point more clear, majority of the comments or engagements will come from people who wouldn't even open this. Now on top of what I’ve personally seen, I’ve chatted about and joked about this with the editors and online directors of several online publications as well as YouTubers and Facebook Page and Group admins. Even though we would laugh, they all backed my observations. Now on top of this, Wallace is loved by his fans, he is loved by his sponsors and he is loved by much of his competition. Plus, he is a fantastic ambassador for the sport into the black community. None of that hurts much either. By: Tom Luttermoser Image Credit: 23XI Racing |