It’s down to the wire for the NASCAR Cup Series Chase Championship, and Bubba Wallace learned the hard way during Sunday’s South Point 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. The 23XI Racing driver came within a few laps of putting himself in position to fight for the win, but one late move cost him, and his No. 23 Toyota fought to the finish. Wallace’s afternoon had already required a comeback before he reached the final battle.
An equipment-interference penalty sent Wallace to the rear of the field, forcing him to regain track position. Yet the Toyota kept coming forward, and as the laps wound down, Wallace worked his way back into contention up front. With 29 laps left, Wallace was directly behind Joe Gibbs Racing’s Chase Briscoe. Briscoe dominated the field, but Wallace wasn’t taking no for an answer and made his move entering Turn 1, changing everything. Wallace tried to catch Briscoe off guard for an opening, but Briscoe never wavered and kept Wallace back.
The No. 23 Toyota slowly dragged up the track, leaving him with a much harder-to-manage car than when he started, after he decided to stay on old tires. The attempt wore out the tires he needed for the final run, and Wallace admitted that cost him the race. “Ultimately we paid the price on our front tires,” Wallace told reporters after the race. This ultimately dropped him from P2 to P8, finishing 11.422 seconds behind Briscoe.
The disappointment was amplified by what Wallace’s team had overcome earlier. His crew had helped him recover from his earlier penalty, and the No. 23 was still positioned for a top-five finish. However, the tire issue forced Wallace into survival mode. On his final lap, he was about three seconds slower than the cars around him, showing how quickly the tire problem took the Toyota out of the win fight.
What looked like a legitimate challenge for the win had become a battle to protect eighth place. Yet Wallace didn’t put the entire outcome on Briscoe or the late move. He believed Briscoe’s car simply became stronger over the long run while his own Toyota faded. That distinction matters for Wallace, especially with five races left in the championship fight until the October finale at Homestead.
He entered Las Vegas 10th in the standings and left in the same position, but his deficit to points leader Kyle Larson moved from 140 to 137 points. This result stings because the speed was there. Wallace battled back from the penalty, reached the lead, and clearly had the speed to challenge the rest of the field. Instead, one calculated gamble cost him the tire life he needed to stay in contention. Sometimes the difference between a win and a P8 finish comes down to a single decision. Something Wallace knows all too well from Las Vegas.
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