The No. 23 Toyota gave Bubba Wallace plenty to work with in 2026. There were weekends when he had the speed to challenge for a win, and others when he came close enough to know what might have been. Yet, as the NASCAR Cup Series season reached its finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway, one number remained unchanged:
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Wallace still had three career Cup wins. He finished fifth that Sunday, but the result did not quite answer the question he had carried through the year.
“We didn’t win. It’s unfortunate. That one will stick with me,” Wallace told Above the Yellow Line Media. “But there were a lot of opportunities that we had to win, and so, yeah, to be able to say that, I think it’s a little bit different. We had a little bit more motivation in our step, a little bit more pep. Yeah, success.”
It is hard to separate Bubba Wallace’s frustration from what happened elsewhere in his own garage. 23XI Racing enjoyed its most successful Cup season, collecting eight victories. Tyler Reddick won six, while Corey Heim added two. Wallace had been the organization’s most recent Cup winner entering the year, following his 2025 Brickyard 400 victory. This time, however, he watched his teammates reach Victory Lane while his own win column stayed empty.
For a while, the No. 23 team looked capable of changing that. Wallace rose to second in the regular-season standings after the first six races. But the strong start did not carry through the summer.
Finishes of 32nd, 21st, 22nd and 29th, among others, took their toll. He entered the Chase in 14th place, having lost much of the ground he had gained earlier. The frustrating part was that the car’s speed had not simply disappeared. The team needed to make more of the opportunities it was getting.
Wallace’s explanation of his growth this season goes beyond the results sheet. Asked what had changed as a driver, he returned to Martinsville Speedway and described a moment when he had to reconsider his approach.
“I think I look at Martinsville, one, I had a massive mental reset after that race and just started putting things in the places that they needed to be,” he said. “Providing opportunities for our partners to win and our team to win.”
That shift meant approaching races with more control. A driver can spend an entire afternoon chasing a result, only to make one decision that puts the whole effort at risk. Wallace wanted to manage those situations better and give his team a chance to capitalize on its pace. He called his approach more methodical, although he did not suggest the work was finished.
“And yeah, it was just more methodical, so still a lot more room to go,” he added.
His final two races offered a glimpse of that approach. Bubba Wallace finished eighth at Martinsville on November 1. A week later, he started 18th at Homestead and worked his way up to fifth.
He closed the season 11th in the final standings, with 17 top-10 finishes. Those are respectable numbers, particularly alongside the difficult stretch that interrupted his early momentum.
Still, Wallace will not look back at 2026 and remember the fifth-place finish as the defining moment. He will remember the races when a win was within reach and slipped away. 23XI has shown it can put winning cars on the track.
Bubba Wallace has shown he can compete with them. Turning that promise into another Cup win is the unfinished business he takes into 2027.