SPEEDWAY, Ind. — Perhaps more than any other racetrack in the world, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway is a heromaker for those who race there. In a city that racing is central to the identity of, and at a Speedway that has become central to the identity of the fans who flock to it, the way a driver is received in triumph and challenge alike is capable of elevating their profile and creating legends in a manner which few other, if any, racetracks can claim.
Only a few drivers can claim to have earned the approval of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s fans, and not just those who have won the Indianapolis 500. Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart won the hearts and minds of the Speedway through NASCAR, and former Cup champion Kyle Larson is revered in Indianapolis and across the state by daring to challenge the Speedway by racing in the Indianapolis 500 twice.
And in the final laps of Sunday’s renewal of the Brickyard 400, the grandstands’ approval of Larson in particular was something that created a clear dichotomy in the race for the win. As much as those in the crowd cheered and voiced their approval of Larson, they were doing the opposite for the man he was battling for the win: Bubba Wallace.
2025 Brickyard 400 results: Bubba Wallace becomes first Black driver to win at Indy, snaps winless streak
Steven Taranto
As the leader in the closing laps of the race, Wallace was the target of some boos and jeers as the track’s public address system painted its picture of the closing laps after a brief rain shower set up a double overtime sprint to the finish.
In eight seasons as a Cup Series driver, Wallace has become perhaps NASCAR’s biggest lightning rod. Emotional, at times mercurial, and the most established and prominent Black driver at NASCAR’s highest level, Wallace’s personality, profile, and performance alike have opened him up to criticism. There are those who have accused Wallace of not winning enough while racing for a famous car owner in Michael Jordan, of being too cocky or in his own head, and ultimately not being good enough to justify his place as one of NASCAR’s stars — let alone the way reactionaries receive him.
But Sunday, Wallace broke a 100-race winless streak and earned his third career Cup Series win by doing things that his detractors said he couldn’t. He won a race straight up, rose to the occasion with a late caution putting Larson on his bumper with little left in his fuel tank, and overcame adversity to take the victory in a fashion that couldn’t be rationalized away.
And then, a funny thing happened at the Brickyard.
When the sound of the engines subsided, cheers for Wallace — many more than he usually receives — sounded from the grandstands. The fans began chanting his name, and they sounded an especially thundering approval as Wallace held his infant son Becks aloft in triumph after his first victory since becoming a father.
By his own admission, there were times when Wallace had let negativity, and the moving of the goalposts by others with respect to his accomplishments, affect him a great deal. And even before a passing shower that soaked turn 1 erased his large lead with just a handful of laps remaining, Wallace managed to find a way to overcome an especially pernicious negativity: his own.
“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,'” Wallace said. “I hate that I’m that way. I think that’s my biggest downfall. We’re all human, and we’re all super hard on ourselves. You guys [the media] know how hard I am on myself.
“At the same time, I was combatting, and I’m like, ‘f—ing right, we can do this.’ It was kind of like the angel and devil on your shoulder. It wasn’t all negative. But to even have that thought, it’s like, ‘man, come on, focus.’ That all went away on the restarts because it was time to really focus and get the job done. Just still working out those kinks and growing as a person.”
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At 31 years old, much has gone into Wallace learning to mature, filtering out the inside and outside noise, and keeping his emotions from overcoming him in a negative fashion. Becoming a husband and father is a significant part of it. So too is better enjoying life — a departure from when he explained to his wife that “racing is everything” when they started dating — and gaining perspective in multiple ways, including through sayings that he reads in “The Daily Stoic,” a book of meditations on wisdom. He considered two sayings before Sunday’s race.
“The wise doesn’t have problems,” Wallace recounted as one. “And then the other one is, ‘We’re always caught up in things we have to do instead of the things we get to do.’ It gives you a perspective of, you’re late for work and you catch a red light and you’re frustrated. Well, now I get 30 more seconds of listening to my favorite song in the car, you know? I’m, like, ‘That’s really interesting, but I’m still late for work.’ That’s really cool. We never look at those things. We’re always like, ‘I got to do this, I got to do this, I got to do this,’ instead of the opposite of, ‘Well, this didn’t happen. I get to do this instead.’ I thought that was pretty interesting.”
The result for Wallace was the conspicuous absence of noise heard in pre-race as he made his way around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in the back of a pickup truck to be paraded before the fans — however they received him.
“I rode around under the parade lap in the truck, and I just didn’t hear any noise. It was very weird, something I’ve never experienced,” Wallace said. “I had the mentality that this was ours to take today.”
The sound of the crowd as Wallace celebrated was the accompaniment to the biggest win of his career. It’s a victory that serves as a triumph that puts Wallace in the leagues of drivers to win at Indianapolis and someone who the Speedway’s fans will always regard as such.
But the reception of the crowd — positive or negative — wasn’t something Wallace sought through victory.
“You’re going to get both sides of the spectrum. It’s our job to shut that aside when the time is counting on you and just go out and deliver,” Wallace said. “Maybe I gained a fan. Maybe I lost another fan today, and that’s OK. I’ve matured a lot. No disrespect, but I really don’t give a damn.
“I’m sitting here a Brickyard 400 winner. [I have] a beautiful family. I’m winning at life. If everything stopped right now, I’d be OK with that, and that takes a lot for me to say. Nothing else really matters.”