Denny Hamlin: Bubba Wallace is a ‘top 10’ driver in Cup Series

Denny Hamlin knows that Bubba Wallace is one of the best drivers in the NASCAR Cup Series. On his Actions Detrimental podcast, the 43-year-old talked about Wallace having two DNFs the last two weeks and giving him words of encouragement.

“I usually send him texts encouraging on tough days or weeks like this for sure,” Hamlin said. “He’s just gotten so used to running up front. He’s a top-10 guy now. Every week he’s up front. When you have weeks like this, it’s like ‘Dang it. I just was on a good run and momentum, I was getting good finishes and then out of my control, BAM! Two DNFs in a row I shouldn’t have been a part of.’

“It’s just racing,” Hamlin continued. “Racing sucks sometimes. Sometimes your competition can take you out when you make no mistakes.”

Bubba Wallace having strong start to 2024 season

Wallace was involved in crashes at Talladega and Dover. The DNFs are setbacks for the 30-year-old driver after who is having a strong start to the season. In 11 races, Wallace has finished in the top three times, including fifth-place finishes at Daytona and Atlanta. He’s coming off a 2023 season where he finished 10th in the standings and reached the playoffs for the first time in his career.

Earlier this month, Wallace appeared on the Stacking Pennies Podcast and talked about the pressure of being the only full-time Black driver in the Cup Series. “There’s way more eyes for sure,” Wallace said. “At times, I’d say the biggest thing I’ve done in this year is ever since 2020, I was always like okay I got to prove to everybody that you know what, I belong here instead of just [being Bubba] and thinking that world is against me and everybody’s out to get me. There may be some, but I don’t need to invest my time into that anymore, you know, trying to prove everybody right.”

“The people that matter, they know what’s right and what’s wrong. I think that’s helped me out a lot. just from the mental side of it,” Wallace continued. “And then showing up to the race track and being more comfortable. I definitely lost touch with who I was for the last couple of years and chasing the wrong thing. You know now that you’ve kind of gotten back to being on the right track, things are starting to click.”