After Brickyard 400 win, Bubba Wallace wants to know: What will they say now?

New York Times

a day ago

INDIANAPOLIS — Bubba Wallace was drained and subdued, his body running as close to empty as his fuel tank had been in the waning moments of the Brickyard 400.
But halfway through the winner's news conference on the fourth floor of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway media center, Wallace suddenly perked up.
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'Does anybody know where the goalposts got moved to now?' Wallace said. 'Anybody? They get moved yet?'
Wallace was referring to his legion of detractors who love to constantly chide him when he loses (like the social media accounts that track how long it's been since he won a race) and poke holes in his accomplishments when he wins.
His first career Cup Series victory, at Talladega Superspeedway? A rain-shortened superspeedway race. Anyone can win one of those.
His second career Cup Series victory, at Kansas Speedway? All car. Kurt Busch won at Kansas earlier that season in the same car number.
His first career playoff appearance in 2023? Couldn't even win a race to get there. Had to point his way in.
NASCAR Overtime at @IMS.
This is how it all went down for @BubbaWallace. pic.twitter.com/exSSywW0Ik
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) July 28, 2025
But after Sunday, when Wallace was en route to a victory until a late caution — and then had to hold off the great Kyle Larson on two overtime restarts — what can the Wallace haters possibly say now?
Well, the internet says NASCAR rigged the race for Wallace …
'It's rigged?' Wallace said. 'Oh, of course!'
Never mind that NASCAR officials, embroiled in an antitrust lawsuit with 23XI Racing, are probably among the last people who wanted to see a 23XI car win a crown jewel NASCAR race. But at this point, nonsensical conspiracy theories are about all that are left.
Drivers typically don't just win the prestigious Brickyard 400 straight up unless they are one of the truly elite stock car racers on the planet. That Wallace saw his 4.5-second lead erased with six laps to go, only to then twice fend off Larson on his outside and William Byron and Denny Hamlin close behind, was easily the biggest statement of Wallace's career.
You can say Wallace hasn't won enough. You can say he's lived on the playoff bubble far too often compared to his teammate, Tyler Reddick. But without reaching into the depths of human stupidity, you can't say he didn't earn his title as the winner of a NASCAR major.
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And yeah, that's surprising in a way. Count us among those who didn't see this coming, who thought Wallace was more likely to cough up his chances on one of the late restarts than to execute them flawlessly. When the rain-induced caution flag came out, how many of us figured, 'Ah, now Larson will win this for sure,' because Wallace simply hasn't been in these situations very often.
Heck, Wallace spent the last 20 laps telling himself he couldn't do it, either — the true sign of a driver who hasn't had enough success to ward off those intrusive thoughts with confidence. Except … he did do it. And now he's won his way into the playoffs for the first time in his career, no longer sweating out the points bubble that became such familiar and uncomfortable territory.
In reality, the goal posts have probably been moved to 'he can't make a deep playoff run.' And if he does, what then?
The truth is, some will never be satisfied with anything Wallace does or says. That's because they don't want Wallace to be in NASCAR in the first place.
Except on Sunday, he was in the first place. Now, for those who insist on twisting themselves into finding reasons he's no good, it's back to the drawing board.
Ty Gibbs won NASCAR's inaugural In-Season Challenge in one of the most anticlimactic ways possible, finishing 21st on the lead lap while No. 32 seed Ty Dillon ended up three laps down. There was never any drama or appearance the two would end up in a battle on Sunday, and Gibbs easily claimed the $1 million prize.
Though NASCAR and TNT put an effort into hyping up the bracket final, fans didn't really seem to buy in. Sure, there was curiosity about Dillon's Cinderella story — but aside from that, the challenge didn't seem to have much juice.
Here are three simple suggestions to improve the In-Season Challenge for Year 2:
• Don't start at Atlanta. NASCAR wanted the superspeedway-style Atlanta to introduce an element of chaos and cause first-round upsets. Except the big wreck there ended up knocking out every single race winner of the season up until that point. By the time the first night ended, only Atlanta winner Chase Elliott remained among the big names. March Madness upsets are great, but it's also more fun if some of the college blue bloods are still in the mix.
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• Fix the seeding. NASCAR tried to get cute and implemented a bizarre seeding system for the tournament. It locked in the 32 drivers three races before the tournament, then seeded the drivers based on their best finish over three races. It was confusing and made for some head-shaking seeding matchups in which the higher seed was clearly a favorite — and confusing is a very bad idea for a bracket challenge entirely meant to lure casual sports fans during a summer lull. Instead of overthinking it, next year's seeding simply needs to be based on the point standings. Done. Easy.
• Bracket pools. It was a huge miss for NASCAR.com (or an affiliate/partner website) not to offer some sort of ability for fans to participate in a bracket pool together. The only option was for everyone to play in the giant NASCAR.com contest. A major element of March Madness is competing in smaller pools against friends or co-workers; how could NASCAR not give people the ability to do the same? Without bragging rights against friends on the line, that removed a lot of potential interest after all perfect brackets were eliminated on the first night.
Wallace's win changed the outlook of the playoff bubble, with Ryan Preece now trailing RFK Racing teammate Chris Buescher by 42 points for the final spot with four races remaining (Iowa, Watkins Glen, Richmond and Daytona).
The three open playoff spots are held by Tyler Reddick (+138), Alex Bowman (+63) and Buescher. So on the surface, you would think maybe it's not much of a battle at the moment.
But don't be fooled: There's likely to be at least one more race winner, which would move the cutline and create a head-to-head battle between Bowman and Buescher (with only 21 points between them right now). Two more winners would essentially knock out all of the bubble drivers except for Reddick — and three more would send Reddick packing without a victory.
We'll count Daytona as a 70-30 chance for a new winner, so then it comes down to the other three races. Personally, it's hard to imagine an upset anywhere else (even though Austin Dillon won Richmond last year after he wrecked two drivers out of the way on the last lap) because short tracks favor the strong teams and Shane van Gisbergen will be the heavy road course favorite.
But if there is a surprise winner somewhere like Iowa or Watkins Glen in the next two weeks, Reddick will suddenly be very, very nervous. And in the wildest, most unrealistic of scenarios, four new winners in the next four races could knock out the lowest one-race winner in the standings (currently Josh Berry).
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Katherine Legge got the best non-superspeedway finish in Live Fast Motorsports team history (137 races total) by finishing 17th in the Brickyard 400 — a finish even better than her best result in the Indianapolis 500 (22nd).
She and her team celebrated on the team radio after the race, and rightfully so. She was pilloried on social media earlier this year after she spun out twice in her Cup Series debut at Phoenix Raceway, collecting Daniel Suárez on the second one. Legge then had to run some Xfinity Series races to get back into the Cup Series, but she failed to qualify for two of them and crashed in four of the five Xfinity races before this weekend.
After qualifying 7.8 seconds off the pace for the Brickyard — including 2.4 seconds slower than the next-closest driver — it certainly didn't look like Indianapolis would be the day things turned around for not only the lone woman in the field but the oldest driver in the race (she turned 45 earlier this month).
And yet there was Legge, racing on the lead lap for much of the day, using a long-run pit strategy to success and passing drivers like Chase Briscoe and van Gisbergen in overtime to finish 17th.
Perhaps this will buy Legge some time with those who don't seem to understand how difficult the transition from open-wheel cars to stock cars truly is, and how the lack of practice time severely hampers rookies who don't have a stock car background. The only way for Legge to get faster is more seat time — in the actual races, under the scrutiny of the critical public eye — and try to find the feel she needs to get speed.
After Sunday, it looks like she's on her way to doing just that.
(Top photo of Bubba Wallace celebrating Sunday's win: Justin Casterline / Getty Images)