Name: Bubba Wallace fans at Talladega: 'We were there for him' - NBC Sports
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Bubba Wallace fans at Talladega: 'We were there for him' - NBC Sports

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MORE: &nbsp;“I’ve been out here for the last month, fighting for everybody to be equal so my kids, when they are older, they can go wherever they want and they do whatever they want and they don’t have to worry about nobody judging them because of who their father is or who their mother is or the color of their skin,” she said. “That’s what I’m out here for, honestly, every day.“I wanted Bubba to know that we supported him for that noose that was found in his garage. I wanted him to know that we were there for him.”This hits hard for me. Ill never forget the chants, I’ll never forget this image!— Bubba Wallace (@BubbaWallace) &nbsp;andKANSAS CITY, Kans. — Winning is always special, but drivers have said, particularly those with one Cup win, that winning a second series race was important because it showed that they were not just a one-hit wonder. passed beyond that with .“To be able to say we’re winners (Sunday) here at Kansas through the year that we’ve had and what we’ve been able to do the last couple of months is incredible. … To come out winners, I knew it was only a matter of time. Had a lot of people telling me that. So it’s finally cool to see it come to fruition. Two times is better than one time.”The victory is not surprising. Wallace had arguably the best car at Kansas in May but two penalties by his pit crew caused him to restart twice at the back of the field. He went on to finish 10th. .At Michigan last month, Wallace was on the front row for the final restart but could not keep from getting by. Wallace then was mired in a battle to keep second and never got the chance to challenge Harvick, .That Wallace is becoming a factor at more than superspeedways — his first career Cup win was last year at Talladega and he has three runner-up finishes at Daytona — shows the growth he and his team are making.“We’re talked about when we go to the speedways and kind of not so much the rest of the tracks, so I want to start changing that,” Wallace said after his sixth top-10 finish in the last nine races. “We’ve been able to show up these last two months or so, all different types of racetracks, and be talked about. That’s cool. It’s a step in the right direction.“We just can’t get complacent. We have to keep going, keep pushing for more. This is great, but we have to continue to go back out and battle. I appreciate the opportunity that I’m in right now with the team that I have and keep going.”————————————————————————————————————————A couple of key moments in Sunday’s race went against and kept him from having a chance to win.On what would be the final restart — at the beginning of stage 3 — Hamlin lined up fourth on Lap 172 but quickly fell back to eighth by Lap 174. In a race where track position was critical, this put him in a challenging spot.Hamlin didn’t get to fifth until Lap 197 in the 267-lap race. He was back up to fourth when he came to pit road on Lap 214 for his final stop.Hamlin was first playoff car to pit. Crew chief Chris Gabehart said he came early because he was trying to leapfrog Joe Gibbs Racing teammate .Hamlin had an 11.5-second pit stop, according to Racing Insights. Leader Bubba Wallace came on the next lap and had a 10.4-second pit stop.That was only part of what kept Hamlin from having a chance to challenge Wallace for the win at the end.Gabehart said Wallace’s entry and exit off pit road, compared to Hamlin’s, was a key factor.t was roughly a two second delta,” Gabehart told NBC Sports of the difference between Wallace and Hamlin. “Some of that was the pit stop just wasn’t great. And to Bubba’s credit, he’s really good at (pit entry and pit exit). His green flag entries and green flag exits have been good for a long time. And it won him a race.”Hamlin acknowledged how good Wallace is in that area.“Bubba, historically on the metrics, has been really good on green flag entries,” Hamlin said. “So I kind of knew that it was going to be tough for me to gain. I kind of focused just on not making a mistake coming to pit road. … He just smashed us pretty bad, I think by about a second. We lost by exactly one second.Said Wallace: “There’s a lot of metrics in our JGR metric sheet. There’s about 1,000 pages. I take pride in trying to be at the top of those. Some weeks you are. Most weeks I’m not, but pit-in, pit-out, green flag stuff has always been one of my strong suits.Honestly, they said, ‘Pit now,’ and I’m like, OK, and just was able to capitalize and that was it. Didn’t do anything fancy, but just one of those high traits that we carry. It worked out for us.”————————————————————————————————————————’s fifth-place finish was not a result he celebrated.Truex, who still seeks his first win of the season and is not in the playoffs for the first time since 2014, gave up the lead on Lap 112 when he had to return to pit road so his crew could tighten the left rear tire.Truex didn’t get back into the top five until seven laps left.“Too many mistakes,” Truex said.He said he felt he had the best car in the race.What could he do better than others?“Pass cars,” he said. “The longer the race goes, the harder it is to do it and the longer it takes you to get through the field. Just too many mistakes.”Asked if this was just the way the season has gone, Truex said: “Yep. Ready for the offseason.”… Martin Truex Jr. finished fourth but was frustrated … what he said after the race.— Dustin Long (@dustinlong) ————————————————————————————————————————Sunday marked the first time in 50 years that the same car number won two races at a track in the same season with different drivers, according to Racing Insights. Both and Bubba Wallace drove the No. 45 car to a win this year at Kansas.The No. 21 car of Wood Brothers Racing won the 1972 Daytona 500 with A.J. Foyt and won the Firecracker 400 at Daytona that July with David Pearson.The last time the same car number won two races with multiple drivers in the same season was 2002.Sterling Marlin won in the No. 40 car at Las Vegas and Dover before he suffered a fractured vertebra and missed the final seven races of the season. won the fall Charlotte race in his second start in the No. 40 car in place of Marlin that season.TONIGHT: is joining !Call in at 1-844-627-2276, tweet your questions for the winner and join us at 6P ET on .— NASCAR on NBC (@NASCARonNBC)Sunday’s Cup race at Kansas Speedway shook up the playoff standings, heading into Saturday night’s cutoff race at Bristol Motor Speedway. won by a driver not in the playoffs. Points leader is the only driver who has advanced to the second round. The other 11 drivers to advance will be determined at Bristol.A pit road penalty and a spin led to a rough day for two-time Cup champion , who is two points behind for the final transfer spot. trails Cindric by three points, and is nine points behind Cindric.. He’s 35 points behind Cindric and all but needs a win to advance.&nbsp; didn’t change who is in and who is out in the playoff standings, but and each clinched spots via points. That means nine drivers have clinched a spot in the playoffs heading into Friday night’s regular-season finale at Bristol. continues to hold the final transfer spot, but he saw his advantage on cut to 13 points.&nbsp;The Truck Series enters the second round of the playoffs. . and were eliminated. Four drivers will be eliminated in the second round, which begins Thursday at Bristol.The 16 drivers in the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs were frozen out of victory lane for the second straight week as non-playoff participant at Kansas Speedway.Wallace had 32 starts between his last October and Sunday’s victory. He becomes the first Black driver to own two wins in the Cup Series. and made big jumps in the playoff point standings, while and endured significant drops.Winners and losers at Kansas: — Wallace’s success has been criticized by certain corners of the NASCAR fan base because his first win came in a rain-shortened race. He took care of that lingering issue Sunday with a dominant win, leading the final 43 laps. Interestingly, Wallace carried the car number 45 to a bit of history. earlier this year. Wallace’s win made the 45 the first number to be driven to victory by different drivers at the same track in the same season for the first time since David Pearson and A.J. Foyt drove the No. 21 to wins at Daytona International Speedway in 1972.Christopher Bell — Bell’s third-place finish Sunday boosted him into the playoff point lead and also guaranteed him a spot in the Round of 12. He leads the points by 10 over second-place . — Hamlin was a double winner — of sorts — Sunday. Bubba Wallace drove a Hamlin-owned car to victory, and Hamlin was next best, finishing second to Wallace. Hamlin stayed in third place in the point standings.Alex Bowman — Bowman was a bit of a showman Sunday, leading a race-high 107 laps, finishing fourth and gaining four spots in the point standings to sixth. — The first round of the playoffs has been nasty for Harvick. He left the opening race at Darlington after his car caught on fire. At Kansas, he finished last after slamming the wall early in the race in tight traffic. at Bristol.Tyler Reddick — Reddick absorbed the day’s biggest drop in points among the playoff contenders, plummeting six positions to 11th after finishing next-to-last. — Busch had misadventures along pit road and on track, losing control of his car and sliding across the grass adjacent to the apron. He finished the race but wound up 26th, two laps down. .KANSAS CITY, Kans. — Non-playoff drivers have won each of the first two Cup playoff races, and two former champions are in danger of being eliminated.Welcome to the 2022 Cup playoffs — where up is down.In an unpredictable season that had 16 different winners in the regular season, two more names joined that list in the playoffs. , and .Never have non-playoff drivers won the opening two races of NASCAR’s postseason.The result is that only one of the 16 playoff drivers has clinched a spot in the second round going into Bristol’s cutoff race Saturday night. Points leader , who scored 19 stage points on the way to placing third, has a large enough advantage that he’ll move on.Nothing else is certain.That includes the fate of a pair of former champions, who have never been eliminated in the first round. or his title hopes are over after a fire ended his race at Darlington and he crashed Sunday at Kansas to finish last in the 36-car field.“We were racing to win anyway today, so that is what we will do again next week,” Harvick said.Two-time Cup champion , , is two points behind for the final transfer spot. Busch’s crew incurred a pit road penalty and he spun before finishing 26th Sunday.Bristol shouldn’t be an issue for Busch, who has nine Cup wins at the track, including the dirt race in the spring. Unless …“If I can have past Bristol results be Bristol results, then, yeah, shouldn’t be a problem,” Busch said of advancing to the next round. “But if I have Bristol results similar to what’s happened this year every week, then no, it’s going to be an uphill battle.” also is outside a transfer spot. He is three points behind Cindric after finishing 14th.“We just fought balance … all day,” Dillon said. “The same thing we’ve fought all year, really. We had high hopes because we qualified pretty decent.“I’m proud of our guys, we fought hard. We kept ourselves in it, and we have a shot at BristolBriscoe is nine points behind Cindric for that final transfer spot after what was a frustrating 13th-place finish.Pit road tormented Briscoe. He and made contact on one stop. Briscoe was boxed in behind during a stop at Lap 139 of the 267-lap race.“(Bowman) started leaving right when I was turning in, so I tried to straighten back up and kind of stop,” Briscoe said of his encounter with the Hendrick Motorsports driver. “He was trying to come out and we just hit each other. It was a frustrating day on pit road for us.“We finally got up to fourth, was really good there. I thought we were top-five car and came down for that pit stop and (Ware) trapped me. I go from running fourth to running 14th, and we were stuck there the rest of the day.“Frustrating when it’s the last car on the lead lap and wasn’t really racing for anything and kind of killed our day. Definitely frustrated. I feel like that was probably the maddest I’ve ever been in a race car in my life, knowing what was on the line and knowing that we had done all that work.”The last time Cup was at Bristol, but spun and collected Reddick, allowing .Briscoe remained optimistic about his chances of advancing.“At Bristol, a lot of things can happen,” Briscoe said. “If you are 20 points above the cutline, I don’t know if you are going to feel safe going into there.”Powered by

MORE: &nbsp;“I’ve been out here for the last month, fighting for everybody to be equal so my kids, when they are older, they can go wherever they want and they do whatever they want and they don’t have to worry about nobody judging them because of who their father is or who their mother is or the color of their skin,” she said. “That’s what I’m out here for, honestly, every day.“I wanted Bubba to know that we supported him for that noose that was found in his garage. I wanted him to know that we were there for him.”This hits hard for me. Ill never forget the chants, I’ll never forget this...

Bubba Wallace fans at Talladega: 'We were there for him' - NBC Sports

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