(photo credit Leon Hammack)

The Bubba Wallace who takes the green flag in the Sunday’s Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway won’t be the same Bubba Wallace who eked out a Playoff berth two years ago.

How do we know? Wallace says so.

“I don’t feel like 2023 Playoff Bubba, where like, ‘Oh man, it’s cool to be talking to you guys for Playoff Media Day,’” Wallace said on Wednesday at the Charlotte Convention Center. “I feel like I belong here and want to continue this trend and have the utmost confidence in our team and our ability and potential to carry this into making a deep run into the Playoffs.

“It all started back in February, but everything just ramps up another notch for the next 10 weeks.”

In 2023, Wallace qualified for the Playoffs on points in the regular-season cutoff race. This year, he won at Indianapolis Motor Speedway—the first regular-season victory of his career—and enters the Playoffs after four relatively stress-free weekends.

Unlike two years ago, when he was bounced from the Playoffs in the Round of 12, Wallace projects an air of confidence entering the postseason.

“I look at the schedule and there’s a lot of good tracks for us coming up,” he said. “We’ve had speed at almost every track on the circuit for the next 10 weeks, so it just takes that little bit more. It takes beating out the 5 (Kyle Larson), the 24 (William Byron), the 11 (Denny Hamlin).

“It takes beating the other 15 guys you’re racing against to do that. And, yes, we’ve had the speed to do that. We’ve got to clean up the execution standpoint and go capitalize on that.”

Before the victory at Indianapolis, Wallace’s previous two wins had come during Playoffs he had failed to make—at Talladega in 2021 and at Kansas in 2022. Both tracks are in the Playoffs this year.

“Hell, I’m good at winning in the Playoffs when I’m not in the Playoffs,” quipped Wallace, who clearly hopes he can win races in the postseason now that he’s eligible for the NASCAR Cup Series title.

TIL NEXT TIME, I AM STILL WORKING ON MY REDNECK!