He's rocking the good luck mustache, and since he grew the stache, Bubba Wallace has started to stash away solid finishes. The driver of the No. 23 23XI Racing Toyota Camry XSE secured a fourth-place finish in Sunday's FireKeepers Casino 400 at Michigan International Speedway, marking his second consecutive top-10 finish.
While Bubba Wallace was stout throughout the entirety of the 200-lap event on Sunday, evidenced by his 10.28 average running position (sixth-best), the race came down to fuel mileage as the final caution of the race came with 54 laps remaining (the estimated fuel mileage at Michigan is 50 laps).
As some drivers, such as William Byron, the race's dominant driver, couldn't reach the finish of the race on their fuel load despite going into big-time fuel savings mode over the final 54 laps of the race. Wallace, on the other hand, had nothing to fear.
“Yeah, when Charles (Denike, crew chief) comes over the radio and says be on it the whole time, that’s all you want to hear," Wallace said after the race. "I was doing a little bit of technique stuff on that run to pick up some fuel. When it was time to go, it was time to go. When you weren’t really gaining anything, you have to be smart about what the situation is, and I feel like we’re getting there. All-in-all, a good day.”
The 31-year-old climbed from his No. 23 car, proud of his effort on Sunday as his team owner, Denny Hamlin, embedded rubber from his Goodyear tires into the Michigan International Speedway during a celebratory burnout and subsequent donuts following his third win of the season.
With the latest solid performance, Wallace maintained 10th position in the NASCAR Cup Series championship standings, and he now sits 61 points above the Playoff cutline with 11 races remaining until the end of the regular season.
Wallace will now head into the inaugural NASCAR Cup Series event at Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez in Mexico City carrying the momentum of a sixth-place finish at Nashville Superspeedway and the fourth-place run on Sunday's event at Michigan.
The two-race top-10 streak is only the second time this season that Wallace has had back-to-back top-10 results. The other occurrence came in the form of back-to-back third-place finishes at Homestead-Miami Speedway and Martinsville Speedway in March.
Admittedly, road racing is not Wallace's forte, but the 23XI Racing driver has really put in an effort in improving his performance on tracks where he has to turn right in addition to left in recent seasons. In the lone road race of the 2025 season, which came at Circuit of the Americas, Wallace recorded his career-best qualifying run at a road course as he started the race from second.
After leading four laps in the race and winning Stage 1, Wallace would score the eighth-most points in the race despite ending the day with a 20th-place finish. Wallace, who has a career-best road course finish of fifth, which he achieved at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Road Course in 2022, will look to improve upon that this weekend in the first-ever NASCAR Cup Series event at Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez.