TALLADEGA, ALABAMA - JUNE 22: Bubba Wallace, driver of the #43 Victory Junction Chevrolet, speaks to the media after the NASCAR Cup Series GEICO 500 at Talladega Superspeedway in Talladega, Alabama. (Photo by Chris Graythen/Getty Images)
‘The Last Dance’, a sports documentary based on former NBA superstar Michael Jordan, has inspired a lot of people. One among those is the full-time NASCAR Cup Series driver, Bubba Wallace.
The 27-year-old will drive for Jordan’s majority-owned Cup Series team, 23XI Racing, in 2021. Mentored by Denny Hamlin behind the scenes, Wallace is certainly entering a whole new and exciting chapter of his professional racing career.
Speaking in a brief interview, he talked about how his mentality changed after watching Jordan’s documentary. In that regard, we just might see a much more motivated and energized Bubba Wallace on the track this year.
Wallace stated, “My mentality changed when I watched ‘The Last Dance’. It’s like, ‘Okay, alright, I see what I need to be like as an athlete if I want to reach these goals and this is what I need to be like’.
“I mean, there’s a lot of pressure. But I keep telling them after the year we had in 2020, pressure is nothing but a thing,” concluded Wallace.
The former Richard Petty Motorsports driver extracted some good performances from his No.43 Chevrolet Camaro in 2020.
While wins were a fair distance away owing to the gulf in racing quality on the track, Wallace managed an impressive tally of 5 Top-10 finishes.
The trio of Jordan, Hamlin, and Wallace sure seemed to excite racing fans after the official announcement came forth last year.
Quite recently, a post had also displayed the fully finished No.23 car being part of the Toyota manufacturing injector line alongside other Cup Series cars.
Qualifying for the Daytona 500 and ensuring a decent result in the season opener would be one way to get the ball rolling for 23XI Racing. But at a big picture level, deriving consistency from the races across the regular season will also be a key objective.
Therefore, the expectations from Wallace and 23XI Racing would certainly be high, considering the reputation of its owners. It would fascinate to see how the driver-team partnership gets going as we count down the days to the new season.
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