Bubba Wallace Says It’s “Unacceptable” That He Hasn’t Won Yet This Year As He Fights To Get Into The Playoffs

Winning cures everything. The NASCAR playoff format has come under a lot of fire lately, especially after Harrison Burton won at Daytona to secure himself a spot in the playoffs in two weeks. Under the current system, a driver is automatically in the playoffs with a win, no matter where they are in the points standings. That means that Burton, who is sitting last among full-time drivers at 34th in points, will get a spot in the playoffs. Meanwhile, drivers like Bubba Wallace, Ross Chastain and Kyle Busch are on the outside looking in. Now, let's look at the points for a second: Burton currently has 306 points for the season, even after his surprise win on Saturday in the Coke Zero Sugar 400. The next driver below him is Kaz Grala with 166 - who has only run 16 of the 25 races this season. Wallace, on the other hand, has 637 points, enough to put him 13th in the standings. Chastain at 14th has 631, meaning both have more than double the points on the season that Burton has scored. But because Burton has a win, he's in the playoffs, while Wallace and Chastain are both at risk of missing it unless they win this Sunday at Darlington. Doesn't really seem fair, right? Well Bubba Wallace isn't going to blame the playoff system if he ends up getting left out of the championship hunt, because he says it's ultimately on him for not winning a race. Bubba's teammate at 23XI Racing, Tyler Reddick, has won two races this season and currently leads the regular season standings. Meanwhile, Bubba is still searching for his first victory of 2024 despite having some good runs the past few months. He spoke about the situation his team is in after the race at Daytona, and took the blame for putting them in a position of needing a win this weekend to get into the playoffs: "Our team deserves better. Our guys deserve better. Racing around the [playoff] bubble is getting old, and I'm taking a lot of that on my shoulders... Not winning at this point is unacceptable." And speaking with NBC Sports, Bubba contrasted his performance with his teammate's, again calling it unacceptable that he hasn't been able to win yet this season: "Got one car fighting for a regular season championship and another on the bubble. It’s unacceptable. I’ll take all that weight on my shoulders. I should’ve won multiple times, and I haven’t. We don’t even deserve to be here, and we aren’t. Gotta go win. That’s it." Of course if Burton hadn't won this past weekend, Bubba would be sitting in a lot better position heading into the final race of the regular season. But that's the risk of this kind of playoff system: The only way to guarantee your spot is with a victory, because you never know when a surprise winner is going to come out and play spoiler. It'll be interesting to see if NASCAR makes any changes to the playoff system after this year (they used to require that a driver be in the top 30 in points to make the playoffs), or whether this is the kind of drama that they were hoping for with the new system. Either way, Bubba knows what he has to do this weekend in the Southern 500. https://twitter.com/NASCAR/status/1828053597453508649