In my ever-unfolding quest to watch pretty much everything related to racing, I realized that I’d never gotten around to watching Race: Bubba Wallace, a six-episode docuseries that Netflix released in early 2022.
So I took a break from binge-watching the Predator franchise to finally check it out over the course of a few days back in February.
It’s largely excellent, though I’ll get the biggest flaw out of the way first: the series ends with Bubba Wallace attempting to make the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series playoffs in the regular-season finale at Daytona International Speedway, a logical end to the season — and probably a deadline for the editing department to hit the target release date.
That target release date was right around the time of the following year’s Daytona 500, but it led to the docuseries missing the most crucial moment of Wallace’s 2021 season: winning his first career Cup Series race at Talladega Superspeedway in the fall. It was an understandable cutoff, but they were so close to spotlighting the biggest moment of the season for Wallace and the team.
And as momentous and historic as that win was, the series touches on way more than just his on-track performance.
It mostly covers the 2021 season, Wallace’s first with 23XI Racing under the leadership of Michael Jordan and Denny Hamlin, but it also gets into his racing background.
Primarily, it focuses on his time with Richard Petty Motorsports, specifically the 2020 season — a year that took place alongside significant world events.
This gets into the innerworkings of NASCAR, specifically how the sport managed to become the first major American organization to get back underway. At the same time, the murder of George Floyd led to widespread protests across the country; this was followed by Wallace making the brave decision to follow suit on a national sporting stage.
Wallace wore a #BlackLivesMatter shirt at Atlanta Motor Speedway, followed three days later by an all-black No. 43 #BlackLivesMatter paint scheme at Martinsville Speedway.
Even if Wallace hadn’t been starting out with 23XI Racing in 2021, I think the entire 2020 season would’ve been worth a docuseries look by itself. But add in the team change and the mental health aspect and it’s a truly compelling, roughly six-hour odyssey.
The mental health aspect is a really good touch, too, as Wallace has been pretty open about his struggles with it over the years — that goes for the base pressures of trying to make it in NASCAR, but also for being the only Black driver in the Cup Series, driving for NASCAR’s all-time winningest driver in Petty and then making the switch to one of professional basketball’s all-time greatest players in MJ.
I just … man, that’s SO much pressure. I can’t even imagine.
In more recent years, Bubba certainly (outwardly, at least) doesn’t seem like he’s been as hard on himself, and he talks about making progress on that front in this docuseries.
Also, similar to the Full Speed documentary about this year’s Daytona 500, I think this would be a really good introductory series into a NASCAR headspace for someone from an outside perspective.
I do think the series spends a little too much time on events like the Bristol Dirt Race, which ultimately wasn’t super consequential, but it’s overall pretty solid all the way around. Good mix of interviews and footage, balancing on-track and off-track events and incorporating a ton of different interview subjects.
I would love it if they had kept this going for a couple seasons, at least. If production had been allowed to roll further on a second season, we would’ve gotten a spotlight on Wallace’s win at Kansas Speedway, where he drove the wheels off the 23XI No. 45 en route to his second career win. It might’ve also touched on Bubba’s Block Party, an event at Richmond Raceway where I briefly got to talk with Wallace.
But overall, this docuseries was cool, and so were the Full Speed seasons Netflix worked on. Wish we’d get more content like this.
Adam Cheek joined Frontstretch as a contributing writer in January 2019. A 2020 graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University, he covered sports there and later spent a year and a half as a sports host on 910 the Fan in Richmond, VA. He's freelanced for Richmond Magazine and the Richmond Times-Dispatch and also hosts the Adam Cheek's Sports Week podcast. Adam has followed racing since the age of three, inheriting the passion from his grandfather, who raced in amateur events up and down the East Coast in the 1950s.