Wallace is about to enter his seventh full-time season at the top level of NASCAR. In 2023, he went winless but made the playoffs for the first time, ending the year tenth in the championship standings.
However, Wallace, who has been very open about his personal struggles, revealed that he fell into a depression following the championship-decider. In an Instagram post after the Phoenix finale, the 30-year-old racer said he was "sitting here on the couch questioning everything and I have no idea why" at 3:42am. He described having "little to no emotion" after climbing out of the car, but ended the post with a hopeful message: "To my peeps out there starting at a blank wall, I'm with you. Tomorrow is another day. Another opportunity. Keep after it. ‘We gon be alright.'"
Wallace's dramatic playoff run was on full display during Netflix's new NASCAR docuseries, showcasing the roller coaster of emotions he and the 23XI Racing team went through before being eliminated in the Round of 12.
But Wallace is in a much better place ahead of the 2024 season. "I’m really good," he explained during Daytona 500 Media Day on Wednesday. "The best I’ve felt mentally. Physically I feel about the same. I’m lazy. I’m a bum (laughing). I need to go and work out. My wife [Amanda] tells me that, and lose a couple of pounds, but mentally, I have more appreciation. I have the confidence, and the awareness of where I’m at in the sport and having just a new appreciation or a different appreciation, just a different mindset going into this year, racing for something totally different. I feel good about it.
"Get through these first two weeks – Daytona and Atlanta – they are just about survival, and then showcase that you can run up front and get pushed, and be a pusher and all of that. I think you really start at Vegas. Good mile-and-a-half for us. There is a reason that Jimmie [Johnson] jumped into a Toyota and made all of his schedule mile-and-a-halves. Toyota is really good at mile-and-a-halves.”
Wallace joked that the positive headspace he's now in is thanks to crew chief Bootie Barker's bourbon collection (featured in the Netflix docuseries), before adding: "No, turning 30, celebrating my one-year wedding anniversary, celebrating life, just having fun with life, letting the little stuff go, focus on the big stuff. I find myself watching 2014 Truck Series races back when you couldn’t tell that kid nothing. Just jump in a truck and go rip. Didn't have any self-doubt in the world. Trying to bring that back, so I feel good.”
Where does Wallace rank himself among superspeedway aces?
Wallace has two victories in the NASCAR Cup Series with his most recent coming at a 1.5-miler, but he's no slouch at superspeedways. His maiden Cup win came at Talladega in 2021, and he has two runner-up finishes in the Daytona 500 (2018 and 2022).
He wouldn't call himself one of the best superspeedway racers in the garage today, but did credit himself with being in the top-ten. But as for his boss, Denny Hamlin? The three-time Daytona 500 winner ranks near the very top if not at the top of that list.
“I mean we look at what he’s [Hamlin] been able to do and the resume he’s built. Him and I actually work really well on speedways together," said Wallace.
"He's really good at keeping the lead. I need to be better at keeping the lead with him. But we both make the right decisions to get up to the front, and when we’re there, we work together really well. It's a product of Denny having a lot of laps. If you had your top three restrictor plate racers, I’d go with Denny, [Ryan] Blaney, Joey [Logano]. I’d put myself top ten. I just need to finish these things and finish more towards the front. Yeah, it’s been fun to build a resume, have great people behind me at 23XI, building great race cars. You have to have that. You have to have the natural instinct to make the right decisions, but also the equipment and people to back you up.”
