Life inside 23XI Racing looks very different depending on which car a driver climbs into. Bubba Wallace is the team’s first driver; Tyler Reddick is a Daytona 500 winner and championship contender, while Riley Herbst has spent much of the last two seasons fighting to prove he belongs. That fight only got tougher when 23XI Racing announced that Corey Heim will replace Herbst in the No. 35 Toyota in 2027. Yet when Wallace recently commented on his teammate’s journey, it wasn’t result-oriented. A different kind of appreciation shone out in his words.

“Riley, this is your second year, right?” Wallace asked during a Dirty Mo Media conversation.

“You’ve been dealt an incredibly difficult hand, but I’m gonna give you your flowers. Best teammate I’ve ever had,” he then praised the No. 35 driver.

Bubba Wallace quickly clarified that it was not a comparison against Tyler Reddick in any way. “And this isn’t sh– on Riley or Tyler or anybody else,” Wallace said.

Further appreciating Herbst’s mindset, Wallace clarified,

“Riley’s had a lot of bad days, and you would never know it. He’s like, ‘Ah, well, on to the next one.’ And I’m pissed off that he’s not even mad.”

That perspective becomes clearer when seeing what Herbst has been going through since coming to 23XI. He joined the team in 2025 as a rookie just as the team was becoming one of NASCAR’s strongest operations. While Wallace and Reddick were established pieces of the program, Herbst came as a third-car expansion effort with expectations that often exceeded what most young drivers face.

The results have reflected that challenge. Through 15 races in 2026, Herbst sits 26th in the standings with one top-10 finish and an average finish of 21.5. He’s had many tough weekends this season.

At the Daytona 500, a late block attempt triggered a massive final-lap crash. The week after, at EchoPark Speedway, a spin that got multiple runners also ended his race at a 33rd-place finish. Martinsville was another setback with a 35th-place DNF.

Then there was Darlington. After Connor Zilisch spun him during Stage 3, Herbst’s frustration boiled over on the radio. Bristol was another incident when the late Kyle Busch retaliated late in the race after an earlier contact between the two. A multi-car pileup at Dover’s All-Star was an add-on to the already difficult stretch. Yet Wallace’s point was that Herbst rarely carried those moments forward.

“It’s incredible to see just how he can let things go and focus on the next week and try to be better,” Bubba Wallace said.

There are positives too. Herbst has had improvement compared to his 2025 rookie campaign, when he was 35th in the standings. He has also improved his average finish from 26.4 to 21.5 and had his first top-10 finish at the Cup level.

He also qualified fourth at Bristol, one of his best qualifying runs of the season, and gave a solid 14th-place run at Kansas. Toyota Racing Development President Tyler Gibbs publicly praised his progress, saying the manufacturer was “loving” the growth he was showing through the steep learning curve of Cup racing.

Even so, his position became uncertain when 23XI confirmed Heim would take over the No. 35 car in 2027. That announcement made Wallace’s comments feel like recognition for someone going through one of the toughest jobs in the garage, mentally more so. Rumour has it that Herbst is set to join Legacy Motor Club. Journalist Christopher Hansen alluded to this in an interview with Frontstretch.

A Recent Bubba Wallace Confrontation Showed the Other Side of His Personality

The conversation took an unexpected turn when Freddie Kraft jokingly asked Herbst why Wallace was “the biggest a–” he had worked with. Herbst immediately pushed back. “Oh, he’s not,” he replied.

While Kraft added, “He’s the worst a—— I’ve worked with in a long time. He didn’t mean it, and the exchange landed as a joke, but it came only days after Wallace was involved in one of the most talked-about post-race confrontations of the season.

At Michigan International Speedway, Wallace’s afternoon nearly got ruined during a Lap 83 crash. Carson Hocevar’s aggressive move on John Hunter Nemechek set off a chain-reaction accident that sent Nemechek into Wallace. The contact also caught Tyler Reddick, who slammed the wall and recorded his first DNF of 2026.

Wallace came out with manageable damage. More importantly, he recovered. After surviving a race that featured 11 cautions and a lengthy red flag, Wallace drove his No. 23 Toyota to a third-place finish. It was his first top-five result of the season after his 5th place at Kansas, and it moved him up to 11th in the playoff standings.

But the story did not stop at the checkered flag. Instead of heading straight into celebration mode, Wallace walked over to Hocevar on pit road. The two talked for several minutes beside the pit wall. From a distance, it seemed like an angry confrontation. Bubba Wallace later explained that it was something different.

“I said, ‘I’m jealous of how fast you are, kid. No doubt, he’s one of the fastest in the field,'” Wallace said.

Then he passed along advice he once received from Kevin Harvick, as revealed in the video shared by Prime Sports.

“Stop hitting stuff and your finishes will show.”

The moment was a contrast to the image many fans have of Wallace. In both cases, the message was similar. Talent matters, but how a driver handles difficult moments often decides what comes next.