Bubba Wallace and 23XI Racing came under criticism from their co-owner Denny Hamlin who deemed their performance as “unacceptable.”
Things have not gone as expected in the 23XI Racing camp as the expectations of glory are subsiding away. After getting a Cup win in their first season in operation, 23XI Racing began on the right foot with Wallace finishing 2nd at Daytona 500. However, since then he has failed to break the top-10 and on a number of occasions finished below 20th.
This led to Hamlin openly criticizing his team and deeming their performance as “unacceptable”.
“I said earlier this week you know, it’s just the win like it was really exciting until you get out of the car and look down the pylon and say, ‘What the f**k? What’s going on?’”
“We’re trying to address all the issues that there is,”
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However, Wallace is looking at the positives and is confident that with experience the team will perform better.
“It’s a growing program. Obviously, we’re behind with our penalty from COTA,” Wallace said.
He also admitted that the team is making too many mistakes but asserted that there is a lot to fight for.
“It’s just mistakes that happen that we got to clean up,” Wallace continued. “Race teams have mistakes. We seem to have little bit more than others right now.”
“But (it’s) still early in the season, we’ll be fine.”
After a year of operation, patience is slowly running out, especially from the co-owner Hamlin’s side. With so many expectations and mediocre performance in the debut season, the team was supposed to challenge for wins this season. Kurt Busch is posting better stats than Wallace with four top-10 finishes. Still, they fall short in the face of their elite competitors, whose rank 23XI Racing envisions joining one day.