Bubba Wallace knows that he needs to do way more than he has to make himself a title contender. Despite four top-ten finishes across the opening five Chase races, the 23XI Racing driver sits 10th in the standings, 137 points behind the championship leader. With Larson continuing to deliver when it matters most, Wallace needs to find a way to turn consistency into a genuine title challenge.

Wallace is not ready to give up on that ambition, though he knows the margin for error is shrinking. The No. 23 Toyota driver has shown he can run near the front, but closing the gap to Larson will require more than another string of respectable finishes.

“It’s not out of reach. Mathematically, no. But with the way that the averages are working out, Larson’s on a roll right now,” Wallace told journalist Peter Stratta before the Charlotte race. “So it’s making it tough for everybody, right? So we need to step up and do more. 

“So I’ve got to do more in the car to put ourselves in contention. Martinsville is kind of the only head-scratcher for us. But I said that about Loudon, and Loudon went pretty well. So, yeah, we’ve just got to keep doing what we’re doing. Charles and I are firing on all cylinders, so it’s just a matter of execution and putting it all together.”

Wallace’s Chase has been a mix of strong runs and missed opportunities. He opened with an eighth-place finish at Darlington, followed by a 14th-place finish at Gateway, where Larson took the victory. A seventh-place run at Bristol brought some momentum back, but Kansas proved more complicated.

A multicar incident on Lap 123, triggered by contact involving Carson Hocevar and Ty Gibbs, caught Wallace in the chaos. He recovered to finish ninth, limiting the damage from a race that could have gone much worse. An eighth-place finish at Las Vegas followed, but those results have not brought him close enough to Larson.

While Wallace believes that he might yet have a shot at the title, it is his teammate Tyler Reddick who has the better shot at overcoming the gap to Larson.

Reddick may have lost much of the momentum it carried early on. The No. 45 Toyota driver has a dominant start to the season, winning the Daytona 500 and the next two races, becoming the first driver to win the opening three events of a Cup Series season. Five victories in the first nine races put him firmly among the championship favorites.

The second half of the season has been far less promising. Reddick’s early dominance faded before the Chase even began, and he has struggled to maintain the same winning rhythm. Still, third-place finishes at Darlington and Las Vegas have offered reminders of what he can do when the No. 45 is working well. Sitting seventh in the standings, 106 points behind Larson, he retains an outside shot at the title.

That leaves 23XI Racing with two different challenges. Reddick needs to recover the form that made him the season’s early benchmark, while Wallace must find a way to turn solid finishes into bigger points gains. Neither driver can afford to let another opportunity slip away as the Chase progresses.

Wallace trails Larson by 137 points, while Reddick is 106 behind. The 31-point difference between the teammates gives Reddick the better position, but both need a significant turnaround to become serious threats. For Wallace, the message is already clear: the No. 23 has shown enough speed to stay in the conversation. Now it needs to deliver the results to match.

Unfortunately for Wallace, who was running well at Charlotte, on Lap 77, Hendrick Motorsports’ Alex Bowman got loose and lost his car, which slammed right into Wallace’s No. 23 Toyota. Contact sent Wallace into the wall, and then the No. 23 Toyota slid down the track, taking another hard hit on the inside wall.

Wallace was able to get out of his car unharmed, but it’s unlikely he’ll be as optimistic about being a championship contender after the Charlotte DNF.