ÇWith a remaining lap on Sunday’s Daytona 500, Bubba Wallace made his move. Trapped behind 15 cars arranged in a clean line in the top groove of the Daytona 2.5-mile oval, Wallace advanced to the bottom lane behind Kevin Harvick in hopes of running over race leader Joey Logano. Just when Wallace seemed to be gaining momentum – disaster. Brad Keselowski, pushed by an extra-strong push from Michael McDowell, threw him against Logano’s left rear bumper, causing several cars to pile up. Wallace might have escaped if Logano’s Ford wind engine hadn’t hit his Toyota right in the nose. In the end, Wallace finished 17th, while McDowell stole the checkered flag just in case. Needless to say, you can expect Michael Jordan to take it personally.
In addition to perhaps Harry and Meghan, you would have a hard time naming another couple that people are rooting for more than Jordan and Wallace – Nascar’s new motoring royalty. Wallace is the extremely talented Nascar driver who happens to be a pioneer of anti-racism. And Jordan is a long-time racing fan who finally made it into the game after decades of sitting on the wall. Last September, they made their relationship official, forming a single car operation called 23XI Racing (pronounced twenty-three eleven). Wallace signed on as a free agent, Jordan as co-owner alongside veteran World Cup pilot and Jordan Brand’s longtime ambassador, Denny Hamlin. Together, Jordan and Wallace give Nascar folk not one, but two black friends to point to the next time the sport’s dark history of intolerance is challenged.
After all, it didn’t take long for the announcement of this new “Dream Team” that we heard Kyle Larson, the half Japanese-American star of the Nascar driver diversity program, casually drop the word n during an online race. After being abandoned by all his sponsors and expelled from his campaign for the World Cup, Larson spent the next 10 months in exile, undergoing diversity training while continuing to earn a comfortable living competing in dirt track events – only to end in a Better Nascar Cup seat with Hendrick Motorsports last October.
In a pre-race interview with Emmanuel thinks of FS1 on Sunday, Larson claimed ignorance of the slander while blaming a small circle of friends for “allowing me to be comfortable enough with that group to say it.” Pressed to see if that was the Nascar people he was referring to, Larson was finally unmistakable. “Oh no, not at Nascar at all,” he said. “I think racing in general may have that reputation, but I don’t think it’s true. In the past 10 months or so, we have seen many changes in the sport. ”
And while it is true that hip hop interviewers and black athletes have invaded Fox’s Daytona program, Pitbull has a stake in the team led by Mexican driver Daniel Suarez and Sunday’s WWE green flag race Sasha Banks, the fundamental change in this Nascar’s season comes down to two absurdly qualified blacks who have yet to prove they belong.
Wallace, of course, persuaded Nascar to ban the display of the Confederate flag, only to find a loop in his garage – an incident that many say was a scam, despite serious reactions from Nascar and the FBI. And then there is the question of Wallace competing in the Cup first, with only four results in the top ten in his first two years competing mainly for the famous Richard Petty. Last year, however, he stood out as the type of consistent challenger who could lead races with better equipment – while at the same time running from his low-key personality to destroying America’s most stubborn symbol of white supremacy, even when the president of the United States. USA denounced him. Now with a team with better resources at 23XI, it won’t be enough for Wallace to just keep up with the traffic. Your enemies will attack if he falls short of the realistic expectations set by your insanely competitive boss.
Likewise, Jordan felt more compelled to give voice – and money – to just political causes in a way he has never done before. Supporting the only black driver at the top Nascar level is not only consistent with his evolved thinking, but also with his tendency to big bets. But this may be the most risky yet. Several famous black athletes tried to field running teams just to see these efforts fail and burn: Tim Brown. Jackie Joyner-Kersee. In the late 1990s, Jordan’s idol Julius Erving partnered with former NFL runner Joe Washington to launch a team at the World Cup. But the effort never took shape, as Erving and Washington mostly failed to get sponsorship. In 1998, they appeared in Daytona with a Busch Series car and struggled to make subsequent races. Two years later, they were out of the market.
Jordan, however, does not imagine leaving with such meekness. On the one hand, he is a billionaire and the owner of the NBA’s Charlotte Hornets to boot. On the other hand, he is not starting a team from scratch, but he is ahead of a sister team to Joe Gibbs Racing, an eternal World Cup favorite with considerable resources to support – at least a technical alliance with Toyota. Not long after Wallace signed on the dotted line, McDonald’s, Columbia Sportswear and DoorDash followed suit. In a pre-race interview with Michael Strahan of Fox Sports, Jordan said he believed Wallace could win “at least a few races”. Until then, the scrutiny on his 23rd car is in danger of reaching Danica Patrick’s intensity levels.
No doubt, Wallace’s haters were encouraged to see the 23XI car start off to a similar start to Erving’s on Sunday. After qualifying with his sixth career record at Daytona, Wallace was sent to the bottom of the grid after his Toyota repeatedly failed inspection and risked being excluded from the race. But a route to victory seemed possible after an accident on lap 14 that took 16 cars out of the field before a five-hour rain delay. As soon as the race resumed under the lights at around 9:30 pm, Wallace resurfaced near the top of the field, no worse for the wear and tear to get entangled with the top cars and even lead a lap – the first time a black driver did in Daytona. He held out until the bitter end, before McDowell – a 100-1 underdog – won the first victory of his 14-year career in the World Cup, otherwise unremarkable, after midnight.
And while 17º place may not seem like much to Wallace, who usually ends there, a little perspective is useful. As Jordan himself acknowledged in the Fox interview, much of the sport is beyond the driver’s control. “When I’m on the court, I can rebound, I can shoot. I can play defense, ”he said to Strahan. “Here, all I can do is cheer.”
The fact that a black owner and a black pilot appeared on the Daytona 500 for the first time since 1969, remain on the hunt for the entire race and continue for the rest of this season and beyond is a feat in tandem with Jordan’s free throw line sinking. – simply amazing. The fact that they, under Hamlin’s astute direction, have accomplished so many things so quickly is proof of the viability of this promising new venture. Still, it will take a few more imitators and much less signaling of virtue before Nascar can really call it progress.