Wallace Jr. aims to launch career with substitute role

It’s difficult not to like Darrell “Bubba” Wallace Jr.

The driver from Mobile, Ala., races hard, is a fiercely competitive guy and an interesting character.

Time will tell if he will be able to sustain himself in NASCAR’s premier series, where he is currently substituting for the injured Aric Almirola at Richard Petty Motorsports. He has the racing talent needed to make a living in stock cars, but whether he can find a front-line team to give him a chance and the equipment he needs to win is another question.

How competitive is Wallace’s personality? To hear him tell it, when he believes his performance is not up to snuff, he tends to get so angry at himself once a race is over that he momentarily loses focus and passes out.

If you haven’t heard of Wallace by now, it’s likely you’ve been away over the past week to 10 days. His advancement to the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series as a substitute at RPM is not shocking, given the dues he’s paid driving Fords in the Xfinity Series and the Toyotas in the Camping World Truck Series.

But the fact that he is the first African American driver to compete at NASCAR’s highest level since 2006 has garnered a lot of attention for good reason. The sport has been a bastion of white participants and has seen only one African American driver, Wendell Scott, win a race in its long and storied history.

This angle was old news by the time Wallace climbed into the RPM Ford at Pocono last weekend because of pre-race coverage.

Once off to the races, Wallace drove like a rookie — trying to figure out how to go fast during his first race in the more powerful Cup cars. He broke the speed limit more than once on pit road, which was probably as much a team and preparation error as it was a driver error.

In this sense, his introduction to digital dashboards did not go well. Otherwise, Wallace’s debut was uneventful — except for the multitude of questions afterward by media members rightfully fascinated with Wallace’s anticipated arrival in NASCAR’s biggest series.

“This was a wonderful day for me, a wonderful day for the sport,” Wallace said. “I wish we could have got a little bit better finish in our Smithfield Ford, but I’m just thankful for the opportunity. I’ve been dreaming about this since I was a little kid, being in the Cup Series, and now it’s here, and I made a name for myself.

“I thought I ran a pretty decent race, just kind of running there by myself, passed a couple people, tried not to make anybody too mad, and hopefully earned a lot of respect from those guys out there. I definitely had a blast. At the same time, I was a little frustrated. But we’ll build off of it. I’ll practice more with the dash and go debrief with the team, and we’ll just get better.”

The alternate news is that Wallace’s time at RPM is limited from the outset. The injured Almirola likely will be back behind the wheel before the summer is out. But for an aspiring race car driver, out of sight is out of mind.

Wallace will continue to have a lot eyes on him despite the fact his ride in the Xfinity series with Roush Fenway Racing is coming to an end.

There is legitimate concern that Wallace did not win in the Xfinity series in two full seasons after driving trucks for Kyle Busch Motorsports, where he won five races in short order. In Xfinity cars, he tended to be a contender who never quite gets in contention often enough at race’s end. By contrast, both Ryan Reed and Chris Buescher have won Xfinity events for Roush Fenway during Wallace’s tenure, Reed having won at Daytona twice.

The drivers who attract the most attention from manufacturers and team owners show themselves to be winners in the lower ranks quickly and often. The recent list includes the top rookies of the last three seasons: Kyle Larson, Ryan Blaney, Chase Elliott, Erik Jones and Daniel Suarez. It has almost always been this way in motor racing.

In the current era, being able to present one’s self to fans and the media is also a prerequisite. And it didn’t hurt that Elliott’s father is a former NASCAR champion and Blaney’s father raced for over a decade in the Cup Series.

Suarez, by contrast, is exhibit A when it comes to NASCAR’s Drive for Diversity. He has admirably handled his rookie season with Joe Gibbs Racing and leads his heralded counterpart Jones in the points as well as Ty Dillon, another rookie with family connections. Every talented driver has an angle and Wallace, another member of Drive for Diversity, has the recognition and clearly knows how to engage the media, fans and his fellow drivers.

Will that be enough for him to land a full-time ride in good enough equipment to prove himself?

Bill Lester, the last African American driver to compete in the Cup Series, raced twice in 2006 and is the only recent example. Lester was at his best at high speed and as a public speaker. A former electrical engineer for Hewlett Packard, Lester was in many respects a sponsor’s dream — articulate, handsome and fast enough to prove he could hang with the drivers in the Cup series.

Sponsorship never arrived because of the perceived conundrum of having a different spokesman in a sport with a predominantly white following. There was not much interest shown by manufacturers, either, who presumably sell cars to people of all colors. Nobody seemed to think it might help the sport grow if Lester got an opportunity to compete regularly. (After all, everybody’s money is green.)

NASCAR, which fully supported Lester’s bid, has been developing its Drive for Diversity program ever since. Even though the program requires minorities and females to demonstrate skill and experience in driving or pit crew work, showing partiality based on skin color or gender is not necessarily popular politically. But it’s the right and best method for the sport to expand its horizons if it truly wants to be considered major league.

Here’s hoping Wallace gets an opportunity to prove he can sustain himself as a contender and become a winner because it would be good for the entire sport. If he gets the opportunity, the rest is up to him. In the short term, his ongoing drives for RPM this summer should be interesting to watch, starting with the race at Michigan on Sunday.