Bubba Wallace is a passionate race car driver, and he demands nothing but the best from his team. But there have been instances when passion has got the better of him. During the 2022 Nashville race, a loose wheel on the pit road put Bubba at a disadvantage. And what followed next was pure frustration on the radio, despite his crew chief, Bootie Barker’s apology. “Leave me the f**k alone, dude. Don’t talk to me the whole f*****g race.” Well, he’s grown to become a more mature version of himself now, but he still feels the NASCAR garage is too soft to speak out on issues affecting the team.

“Our locker room talk is way different. Our coach talk is way different than what you guys go through. ‘Hey motherf*****, You need to get your s*** together’ like we got ‘hey man, you want to go out to lunch. Let’s talk about our performance’ and it needs to happen because we got a lot of softies in our sport,” Bubba Wallace said on the Bussin’ With The Boys podcast.

The conversation started with Bubba Wallace explaining how he was reading a book on Michael Jordan’s trainer, Tim Grover. And that kind of mentality to push the team to do better, that culture isn’t practiced in the Cup garage.

These days, crew chiefs are more likely to function as managers, strategists, and communicators than to dominate by assertion or fear or intimidation (whatever you wanna call it). Today’s teams significantly rely on live data, simulation tools, engineering models, and more advanced AI-assisted performance analysis rather than just gut and expertise. Success often depends as much on collaboration as confrontation.

Furthermore, Bubba Wallace believes that the shift extends beyond the drivers themselves. “You went from more mechanical people to now more engineer background. And so people coming from four-year degrees or master’s degrees and in college and looking at computer screens and not having their a** chewed out,” he further expanded on the topic while speaking on the podcast.

The route to reaching the Cup Series has also evolved. There’s a manufacturer-backed development pipeline that produces next-gen drivers. William Byron, Corey Heim, and Corey Day are examples of them. Even if you are a proven driver in grassroots racing, the new norms of modern era racing is something everyone has to go through.

Take Alex Bowman’s situation, for example; his struggles and lack of wins have been well-documented. But every time HMS leadership speaks about his situation, they always seem to back him. Even if the team might be working on a replacement or firing them, the message isn’t clear; there are subtle hints that drivers have to read. “I think they will discreetly drop hints, they’ll be like, ‘Hey, we think you could improve in these areas, and it’s not like, you suck, you need to do better,'” Blaney added.

Now, this wasn’t the only bold take the 23XI racer had on the podcast; he also bluntly shared his opinion on one of NASCAR’s biggest Hollywood movies.

Wallace’s unpopular opinion

The same podcast appearance also produced one of the more surprising takes Bubba Wallace has delivered in a while.

“It’s the worst (expletive) movie ever,” Wallace said bluntly when asked about Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. Startled that a NASCAR driver would not enjoy one of the most well-known racing films ever produced, the hosts pushed back right away. Wallace, however, was not about to back down.

“Well it makes a mockery of the sport,” Wallace said. “No one f****** ‘shakes and bakes’ dog,” he explained.

Many fans consider Talladega Nights to be a cherished comedy that exposed viewers who might not have previously seen a race to NASCAR culture. The movie became a cultural phenomenon, giving rise to many memes and popularizing expressions like “Shake and Bake” in sports jargon.

Bubba Wallace, on the other hand, sees it from a racer’s standpoint. The movie’s humor isn’t actually the focus of his critique. Rather, it focuses on how incredibly implausible a lot of the racing action is. In actual NASCAR competition, the well-known “Shake and Bake” drafting tactic executed by John C. Reilly’s Cal Naughton Jr. and Will Ferrell’s Ricky Bobby just doesn’t exist.

That difference highlights a divide that often exists between drivers and fans. Fans may love the exaggerated version of NASCAR shown in movies, while competitors spend their lives trying to perfect a sport that is far more technical, strategic, and demanding than Hollywood often portrays.