With Kyle Busch Motorsports announcing its driver lineup sans Darrell Wallace, Jr., all signs have pointed toward Bubba moving up to the NASCAR Xfinity Series (formerly the NASCAR Nationwide Series) in 2015.
Following his victory in the Ford EcoBoost 200, Wallace was asked of his plans for next season and he couldn’t say much as things aren’t finalized yet.
“We’re continuing to work hard to find out future plans for me. I’m going to go play some golf down here in Miami, enjoy this win, enjoy the off-season,” he said. “But as far as plans, we’re continuing to work hard. You never know, we could be in the Nationwide Series, XFINITY series, get some truck races. You never know, we’re working hard with coach, everybody at JGR, they’ve been giving me a great opportunity ever since ’09, so we’ll continue to — hopefully this helps some way, but we’ll stay on it and come up with something soon, I hope.”
Wallace added that not having anything set in stone for 2015 was motivation to run strong on Friday night en route to scoring the victory.
“It’s getting people looking, and that’s what we have to do,” he said. “We have to get people knowing who I am and wanting to be a part of this organization. I don’t spend too much time thinking about that.”
Wallace has spent the past two years at Kyle Busch Motorsports and post-race, Kyle Busch expressed his thoughts on Wallace’s departure, saying that he was proud of the success Wallace had in a couple trips to Victory Lane this year as he finishing third in points.
“I was really proud of that effort, of the [No.] 54 bunch and Jerry Baxter and Bubba Wallace. It is going to be sad to see him go, but we’ve got another great shoe that’s going to be able to fit in that role really, really good with Erik Jones next year,” Busch said. “It’s not that I’m saying goodbye, but I’m wishing him the best next year in what he gets to do, and I’m excited about his growth and opportunity to move up to the Nationwide Series, or XFINITY next year.”
Busch was also asked about Wallace’s plans for next year as well, and responded that those questions should be directed towards Joe Gibbs.
“Him being a JGR driver, we were just fielding those trucks for him in the last two years, so it’s been fun to help him grow, and like I said before, the Truck Series and what KBM is, is it’s a growing period, whether it’s for crew guys — heck, I think now it’s about two thirds of our people head on over to JGR anyway, so I’m about ready to call that place KBM South,” Busch added. “But Bubba is on his way down there being a JGR driver. As far as I know he’s going to run part time Nationwide Series. I don’t know how many races.”
Joe Gibbs said that his team is working on potential plans for Wallace in 2015.
“We’re going to have a big meeting next week for him,” Gibbs revealed. “But we’ve got some good stuff lined up for him for next year, so I think we’re going to wind up with a real good package for Darrell.”
Residing in Canada, she freelances for a number of racing publications, from SpeedwayMedia.com to On Pit Road while covering local short tracks up in Ontario.