“Brakes blew out. Unfortunate. I didn’t have any sign leading up to that last restart there. Just noticed on lap three or four that the pedal just traveled further than it had by a little bit. So turned on my fans, came back, and that was it,” Wallace said post-race. The lack of prior warning left Wallace and his team with little time to react, turning what could have been a promising finish into a disappointing 29th-place result.

The NASCAR Cup Series race at Phoenix Raceway saw intense battles, strategic pit stops, and fluctuating race positions. However, for 23XI Racing’s Bubba Wallace, the race took an unexpected turn that dashed his hopes for a strong finish.

But what seemed like a routine race quickly turned into a nightmare, bringing Wallace’s momentum to a sudden and frustrating halt.

“Well, it’s like damn, that hurts because this one caught me off guard. About 15-20 laps before then my brake pedal started to fade, and that means they’re getting hot, but I had no indications of that the two hours prior. So everything was status quo, everything was fine, and then it started traveling, so I made sure my fans were on, the cooling was good, and then you heard a loud bang in the car, like a loud pop. And so I had not touched the brake pedal yet, and so I mean this is all within what, two seconds, right? Two-three seconds, yeah, where it’s like, oh, I don’t know if that’s the brakes, and then I touched the brakes, and I’m like, oh no, it’s the brakes, and so then you just brace for impact,” Wallace explained in a recent interview.

Even after the race, Wallace had revealed he’d been caught off guard by the failure. “I didn’t have any sign leading up to that last restart there. Just noticed on lap three or four that the pedal just traveled further than it had by a little bit. So turned on my fans, came back and that was it.”

Wallace had been making steady progress throughout the Shriners Children’s 500, navigating the challenges of the short track with determination. He had broken into the top 10 and was poised to capitalize on his momentum, eyeing a strong result that could boost his early-season campaign. However, disaster struck on lap 267 when his brake rotor failed without warning, sending him hard into the outside wall and ending his day prematurely. 

Before the race at Phoenix, Wallace had been enjoying a decent start in the Cup Series, running competitively and securing solid results. This momentum made the brake failure even more frustrating, as it not only cost him valuable points but also disrupted the rhythm he had been building early in the season. 

“No, it just brakes exploded. The right front rotor exploded just from excessive heat. So that was unfortunate because I felt like we had just gotten our break. We had struggled all day on Sunday and then finally had a good restart, got inside the top 10, and was doing our best to hang on to a top 10 run, and then the racing Gods had other plans for us,” Wallace said about the incident.

Despite his disappointment, Wallace quickly turned his attention to the next challenge on the NASCAR calendar. In a simple yet determined message to fans on his Instagram story, he wrote, “On to Vegas…” signaling his readiness to put the Phoenix setback behind him and focus on the upcoming Pennzoil 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

In a time of trouble, Denny Hamlin has made it clear what the ask is for Bubba Wallace. “Oh my gosh, we’ve got to get more points — if we would have started that process earlier, we wouldn’t have been in a panic. I think it is for Bubba that every race is very important.”

What lies ahead for Bubba Wallace?

With 2 DNFs in 2025 already, things look shaky for Wallace. His contract situation last year already had some putting him out of the 23XI Racing seat. So, when Hamlin and Co. offered him a new deal, Wallace knew the expectation on his shoulders was heavy. How is he dealing with it? Well, he has a different mindset now that he has a new team member. We’re not talking about Charles Denike. We’re talking about his son Beau!

He said, “And even Amanda, we were texting after the race and she was like ‘I’m surprised you’re not upset’ or something along those lines. But she’s used to the bad days and I’m a pain in the ass, so she was quite surprised. If it all ended today, it’s ok because I have a good family, and we’ll be fine. It just wasn’t meant to be, and I was trying to understand that pretty quick.”

However, it won’t be the mindset that gets him the approval from the NASCAR community. Kevin Harvick has made his stance clear when he said, “If you don’t elevate your game and you don’t pay attention to the ovals and the road courses and you better block your whole life out for it, because if you don’t, somebody else is going to because that’s what it takes at this level.”