Bubba Wallace grinded out a ninth-place finish in Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series Hollywood Casino 400 at Kansas Speedway. The top-10 result came after the driver of the No. 23 was involved in a multi-car pileup on a restart midway through Stage 2.
Among those collected with Wallace were fellow Chase driver Carson Hocevar and non-Chase drivers Erik Jones, Josh Berry and Zane Smith. While the crash damage hindered Hocevar, who finished 33rd, it was not enough to stop Wallace from finishing top 10.
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Wallace gives his side of the story on Kansas wreck
As the field blasted past the flag stand for a restart on Lap 122, chaos quickly unfolded.
Suddenly, Hocevar, who restarted 11th, darted to the right and his No. 77 Chevrolet bounced off Ty Gibbs’ No. 54 Toyota. Squeezed in the middle of Hocevar and Wallace, the contact also sent Wallace’s No. 23 Toyota spinning down the frontstretch.
Hocevar, too, came back down the track and collected others in the pileup.
In a post-race interview with Frontstretch, Wallace said as soon as he thought he had an opening to escape the wreckage, he was already done for.
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“I was gonna shoot top of 22 (Joey Logano) but he kinda blocked it, so I was just gonna maybe look at the middle but at the time I thought of that, I was already turned,” Wallace said.
Hocevar has been at the center of controversy multiple times this season. Perhaps most notable was his on-track incident at Bristol two races ago with Ryan Blaney, which ended in a massive post-race brawl between the two drivers.
While not seeming too angered by the incident, Wallace felt Hocevar was the one to blame for the Stage 2 wreckage.
“To me, it just looked like the 77 (Hocevar) hooked a right into the 54 (Gibbs) but it is what it is,” Wallace said.
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The ninth-place result was Wallace’s sixth top-10 finish in 18 starts at Kansas. The 1.5-mile track is one of Wallace’s better racetracks as the 23XI Racing driver won at Kansas in September 2022 and also has four top-five finishes.
Wallace aims to build off solid Bristol, Kansas results
Don’t look now, but Bubba Wallace has quietly put together a consistent Chase run. Through four Chase races, Wallace has three top-10 finishes and a finish no worse than 14th.
Wallace began the Chase as the 14th seed in the points standings. With six races remaining, the Alabama native finds himself 10th in the rankings, 140 points behind championship leader Kyle Larson.
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Wallace is making his third appearance in the NASCAR Cup Series postseason, the third time in the last four seasons.
Wallace is making his third appearance in the NASCAR Cup Series postseason, the third time in the last four seasons. He is still searching for his first win of the 2026 season, with his latest victory to date being the Brickyard 400 in July 2025.
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