Wallace Outduels Larson in Double Overtime, Banks Brickyard 400 Victory

By David Morgan, Associate Editor

SPEEDWAY, Ind. – Bubba Wallace nearly had the win in Sunday’s Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway snatched from his grasp not once, but twice.

Nonetheless, the No. 23 team at 23XI Racing never gave up the fight, holding off Kyle Larson and a drained fuel tank in double overtime to score his first Crown Jewel win and secure a berth in the Playoffs for the first time since 2023.

“This one’s really cool. I’m wore slap out if you couldn’t tell,” Wallace said.

“I’m just proud of the team, proud of the effort put in each and every week, people pushing me to be better. The biggest thing that gets lost is believing in self. And I’ll say those last 20 laps, there was ups and downs of telling myself you’re not going to be able to do it. And I hate that I’m that way, but I pushed myself to be the absolute best.

“…Once I saw that it was Larson (on the restart), I knew I’d have to roll my sleeves up. He won here last year and he’s arguably the best in the field. I have no problem saying that. I respect the hell out of what he does, how he drives, he pushes us all to be that good. So to beat the best, we had to be the best today and we were able to come out on top. So today was a surreal feeling.”

For Wallace, who started second on the day and was strong throughout the race, everything hinged on the final round of green flag pit stops, which saw Wallace’s Chumba Casino sponsored Toyota hit pit road first among the contenders with 40 laps remaining in regulation.

After pit stops cycled out, the presumptive leaders of the race stood as Joey Logano, Wallace, Tyler Reddick, and Larson, with a number of other cars ahead of them that were trying to stretch their fuel further than those four.

With 26 laps to go, Logano suffered an issue with his right-rear tire, which dropped him out of the running, boosting Wallace to the top among the cars that would be contending for the win as the remaining laps played out.

Eventually all of those cars made their way to pit road for fuel, allowing Wallace to take over the outright lead of the race with 18 laps to go.

Wallace held a nearly five second lead over Larson at the time, which Larson was able to cut to 3.1 seconds by the time the field reached six laps remaining – a gap big enough to keep Larson at bay should the race run green to the finish.

Unfortunately, Mother Nature had something to say about the finish with a brief rain shower moving over Turns 1-2, forcing a yellow flag and an eventual 18-minute red flag for track drying, pushing the race into overtime.

“Damn,” Wallace said of his first thought when the caution flew for rain that erased his lead over Larson.

“And I said that for a second, but I was like, man, I really want to win this straight up. I want to go back racing. So yeah, I was content with it going on. I was bummed that we gave up that lead, but here we are.”

Once the field got reset, it would be Wallace occupying the low lane, with Larson up top. William Byron lined up behind Wallace, as Josh Berry moved in behind Larson for the restart.

Wallace would get the jump on Larson on the first overtime restart, but Larson was not to be deterred as he was getting ready to set him up and try and make a pass into Turn 3 when a crash broke out mid-field involving Zane Smith, Reddick, and others, sending the race into double overtime.

“Keep saving hard,” Wallace’s crew chief Charles Denike said to Wallace over the radio during the break between overtimes with fuel a major concern for the No. 23 team.

This time around, the restart went exactly as planned for Wallace as he took over the outright lead before the field even cleared Turn 1. From there, it was a matter of just keeping Larson in the rear view and hoping the caution did not fly again before he got back around to the white flag.

Both of those things went Wallace’s way as he led the final two laps and wrote his name into the history books as a winner at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Larson explained afterwards that with the difficulty in passing at Indianapolis, once Wallace was clear into the lead, there wasn’t much that he could have done in chasing him back down.

“There’s nothing you can do here (at Indianapolis Motor Speedway) to pass, so no, I don’t really think there was anything I could do differently,” said Larson.

“I was second gear on the first restart, and honestly, that one worked out a little bit better, but he almost got clear of me down the front stretch. And then on the second restart, he brought the pace down a little bit slower, so I needed to be first gear.

“It was kind of the same thing with me last year – he had the preferred lane on the inside and it’s really hard to beat that.”

Denny Hamlin, who co-owns 23XI Racing with Michael Jordan, rebounded from a crash in qualifying to finish the race in third-place, soaking in the win as the owner afterwards, noting that even thought it wasn’t him finally breaking through at Indianapolis, he wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to kiss the bricks with Wallace and the rest of the 23XI employees.

“I’ll take every opportunity I can when those guys go out there and they get trophies, I make sure I treat it as my own because I can assure you it’s much harder to win as a team owner than it is a driver,” Hamlin said.

“Because Joe Gibbs and that whole team, they do all the work. All I have to do out here each weekend is drive it to the best of my ability and I got to send ’em in the right direction to make the car go faster. Building a team from scratch is a huge undertaking and so you feel more gratification because I had my hand in every little piece of that race team from the branding to the sponsorship to the competition, to the everything.

“So that’s why parents always feel much prouder when their kids accomplish something more than they do.”

RFK Racing teammates Ryan Preece and Brad Keselowski came home in fourth and fifth place, respectively as they continue their pursuit to make the Playoffs.

The remainder of the top-10 went to Todd Gilliland, Ryan Blaney, Christopher Bell, Alex Bowman, and Carson Hocevar.

Four races remain in the regular season as the Cup Series heads to Iowa Speedway next Sunday, where Blaney is the defending winner.