Bubba Wallace elaborates on his progress on road courses ahead of 2024 NASCAR Cup season: "Not even in the same ballpark"

23XI Racing driver Bubba Wallace has opened up about his past struggles with road course races and shed light on the progress he made in the 2023 season ahead of his Sports car debut at Daytona.

Road course tracks have highlighted Wallace's vulnerability in the past, with the #23 Toyota driver self admittedly struggling on such tracks. He made a pivotal decision after the Indy road race in August last season, as he dialed up the Toyota management for extra seat time on such courses in other categories.

In a bid to improve his road racing skills, Bubba Wallace is set to compete in the four-hour IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge Series opener this Friday (January 26) before the Rolex 24-hour race. Wallace is teamed up with Toyota NASCAR drivers John Hunter Nemechek and Corey Heim for the event.

The 30-year-old Toyota driver recently elaborated on how the opportunity would help him work on his road course racecraft. He told Fox Sports:

"I think any help is good help for me. We made massive improvement over the last two road course races and felt really good and felt confident about it and had fun with it. Roval is madness but we were really fast all day. Watkins Glen figuring that place a little bit.

"Still got a lot of room to go but from the start of the season and the years prior it's been not even in the same ballpark."

Bubba Wallace took a 12th-place finish at Watkins Glen last season and a 16th-place finish at the Roval despite being spun around in the race. He showed genuine speed at the Roval last year, as he topped the practice session and qualified fourth for the race.

Wallace will get plenty of seat time at Daytona, as he aims to improve his skills ahead of his 2024 NASCAR Cup Series campaign.

---

Bubba Wallace elaborates on "different outlook and mindset" for 2024

Coming off a career-best season last year, Bubba Wallace has learned his lessons from the season, where he made his maiden playoff appearance in the Cup Series.

Wallace explained that he will be entering 2024 with a different outlook and mindset having seen no improvement after trying too hard in the first half of the season.

"Having a different outlook, different mindset coming into it. You know, not trying too hard. Let everything kind of naturally come to you. Look at what we did last year. It was really, really positive. … The start of last year I kind of chased what we were trying to do," he told NBC Sports.

Wallace added that his consistent results in the second half of the season were indicative of his true potential. Hence he approaches the upcoming season with a mindset of not putting too much pressure on himself like he has done in the past.