Bubba Wallace will be without a backup car for this weekend’s Cup race at Talladega Superspeedway (2 p.m. Sunday on NBC).
The Richard Petty Motorsports rookie will have to make it through one practice session and qualifying on Saturday with one No. 43 Chevrolet at his disposal before competing in his second Cup race on the 2.66-mile track.
“Out of all the speedway races we have had, we have run okay, but then the cars are totaled at the end,” Wallace said Friday at Talladega. “That is part of it. So, yeah, we are just going to go out and do our own deal until the race starts. That was new news to me going into this weekend. I was like ‘Oh, alright’.”
He finished 16th at Talladega in the spring and placed 14th in the July Daytona race.
The lack of a backup car is a product of RPM’s lack of funding.
The team has struggled to secure sponsorship for Wallace, who finished second in the Daytona 500 but has one top 10 in the 29 races since. He has wrecked in four of the last 10 races.
RPM also auctioned off Wallace’s Daytona 500 car in May. The car went for roughly $83,000.
Sunday’s race will be the seventh where Petty’s Garage and Medallion Bank have been on the car. Both are companies operated by the team’s co-owners, Andrew Murstein (Medallion Bank) and Richard Petty (Petty’s Garage).
NBC Sports’ Dustin Long chronicled the team’s sponsorship struggles while embedded with RPM in August.
“Reality is we were so late in what took place in ’17, budgets were petty well set in ’18,” Brian Moffitt, the team’s CEO, said at the time of signing Wallace. “We knew this year was going to be like it is. We were hoping we would close more business in-season like everybody does. We really think that ’19 and the discussions that we do have are very positive around Bubba.”
Wallace called the team’s situation “ballin’ on a budget.”
“Money is the root of all evil and success for us,” Wallace said. “We just need a partner, and we have great partners right now with World Wide Technology for a brand-new sponsor to come on-board and to take a big leap with us is big. So, they have done a lot for us. STP, Air Force, Click N’ Close, and we have had a number of great partners throughout the year to get us to where we are at, but we still need more. We want more funding to help our speed, help all resources that go into making a race team successful. …
“We will go out and finish out these next six races the best that we can. We have a new car coming here in a couple of weeks, so we have some good things coming it’s just a matter for having a little bit of luck on our side. I was just glad to be able to finish Dover last weekend (in 23rd, his best finish in seven races) and now we can kind of get through this weekend, hopefully unscathed and then get the last five I would say into a smooth consistent roll into the off-season. And then get really prepared for when February comes around.”
NBCSN will debut “Racing Roots: Featuring Bubba Wallace” at 6:30 p.m. ET Saturday after Cup qualifying.
After Saturday’s qualifying, Wallace posted a message on Twitter for those who had been concerned about the team not having a backup car this weekend.
