Bubba Wallace arrived at Iowa sitting 60 points above the Chase cutline with four regular-season races remaining, and Saturday qualifying made the road ahead a little harder. Wallace qualified 26th with a 23.709-second lap, well behind Ryan Blaney’s pole-winning 23.474. At the 7/8-mile Iowa Speedway, a gap of more than two-tenths is significant. It left Wallace starting deep in the field despite showing better pace in practice, where he ranked 11th overall and 10th in 10-lap average. Wallace did not try to dress up the result afterward. He knew the qualifying lap was not good enough, and he said so.

“I’m so f***ing pissed off,” he said post-qualifying. When asked what happened, he kept it crisp. “We just gotta do better. That’s all.”

“We looked at what we did last year. I’m guilty of it. We got a bad qualifying draw from the last race, and that’s just a poor excuse. I need to give better feedback, get the car better. Pretty good in practice, just missed it a little bit in qualifying.”

Calling your own excuse a bad one on camera takes some accountability. It does not, however, change where Wallace will start. Rolling off 26th at a short track puts him in traffic immediately, makes early-stage points harder to collect, and gives him less room for error. With Wallace entering Iowa 60 points above the Chase cutline and four regular-season races remaining, a poor qualifying result only adds pressure to an already important stretch.

Iowa is not an isolated problem; it is the latest entry in a season-long qualifying pattern for Wallace. At Sonoma in June, he pushed too hard on his second qualifying lap, dropped a tire into the dirt, overcorrected and hit the wall.

Later that month at Pocono, Wallace spun during qualifying and hit the inside wall, forcing him to start from the rear of the field. At Texas in May, a practice crash sent the No. 23 team to a backup car, and Wallace started 37th.

Three qualifying mistakes have added up. Wallace has an average starting position of 18.783 this season. The contrast is noticeable after a 2025 season in which he won the Brickyard 400, started second at Indianapolis before taking the victory and came within 0.013 seconds of a pole.

The drop may have several factors behind it. Charles Denike took over as Wallace’s crew chief before the 2025 season and emphasized improving the team’s performance across the entire weekend, including qualifying. The material available does not show that Denike deliberately sacrificed qualifying speed for race-day performance, so Wallace’s recent qualifying struggles are better treated as an execution issue rather than a confirmed setup philosophy.

Wallace was not the only prominent Toyota driver to struggle in qualifying. Denny Hamlin qualified 29th, three spots behind him. But Toyota still had speed near the front, with Tyler Reddick qualifying fifth and Ty Gibbs sixth, so Wallace’s result cannot be explained as a manufacturer-wide problem.

More Than Just a Bad Saturday for Bubba Wallace

Wallace is in an option year, but his future with 23XI appears settled. Both the team and Wallace’s camp have indicated he is set to return in 2027. At the same time, 23XI has already confirmed Corey Heim as a full-time driver next season. Heim has won twice in just eight Cup starts this year, while Tyler Reddick, second in the championship standings, signed a contract extension earlier this season.

So the question largely answers itself. FOX Sports reported that both 23XI Racing and Wallace’s camp have indicated he is set to return in 2027.

The performance comparison is still worth watching. Tyler Reddick sits second in the Cup Series standings, while Corey Heim has already won twice in only eight starts on a part-time schedule. Wallace, meanwhile, has 10 top-10 finishes, no wins and a 17.045 average finish through 22 races.

For now, Wallace has a race to salvage from the 26th starting position and a 60-point cushion above the Chase cutline. Iowa will show whether the No. 23 can turn its stronger practice pace into a better race-day result.