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Bob PockrassNASCAR
LONG POND, Pa. – Darrell “Bubba” Wallace Jr. has signed a contract extension with Richard Petty Motorsports that will keep him in the seat of the No. 43 car through 2020, and he didn’t think twice about wanting to stick with the team.
Not that he really had time to think about any offers.
Wallace said his Hall of Fame owner Petty told him three weeks ago – while Wallace was asleep in his motorhome at Daytona — that the organization was picking up a two-year option.
“I was asleep on my couch in Daytona when he comes barreling into my bus when he says, ‘Hey, we’re going to do the next two years with you,'” Wallace said Saturday morning at Pocono Raceway. “I’m like, ‘OK, great.’
“It was just like that. And I went back to sleep. … I didn’t have no idea [it was coming].”
The 24-year-old Wallace is the first full-time African-American driver in the NASCAR Cup Series since 1971. Wallace is 24th in the NASCAR Cup Series standings as a rookie but has worked well with the team, which has been a team in transition this year as it switched from Ford to Chevrolet and moved to a shop on the Richard Childress Racing campus.
We like a little bit of what he’s doing, so I think we’re going to hire him for next year,” Petty said with a laugh. “That’s a big deal. From our standpoint, it gives us some stability.
“We’re still learning Bubba. Bubba is still learning us. … We see improvements, although a lot of the times the finishes are not that much better.”
Wallace has one top-10 in the 19 races since a second-place finishing the season-opening Daytona 500.
“For me there was no matter of searching,” Wallace said. “For me, it was a matter of getting our cars better. This lets me relax a little bit and really digest and focus on the race car. It’s just a matter of making this better.
“Richard is obviously ‘The King’ for a reason and he wants to see his cars back in victory lane. I feel like there’s some unfinished business before I [possibly ever] do leave this organization and it’s obviously to give him a win.”
RPM is not alone in its struggles among the RCR and affiliate teams. But it also is one that isn’t fully sponsored. Wallace has competed in four races this year where his sponsorship has come from Petty, a company operated by team co-owner Andrew Murstein or a NASCAR-licensed product.
RPM has had sponsorship from Click n’ Close, The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, STP, World Wide Technology, U.S. Air Force, Coca-Cola and Smithfield-related companies this year. Smithfield, which is sponsoring six races this season, is expected to leave the team after this season as it has moved the majority of its racing sponsorship to Stewart-Haas Racing.
Announcing the extension now, the team hopes it can work long-term deals with sponsors.
“This is pretty nice, definitely a stress reliever knowing that we have a certain future ahead of us,” Wallace said. “It has been an incredible opportunity. Coming into the season, we didn’t know what to expect.
“We had our expectations. We kind of underperformed. We see that from both ends, my end and the team’s end. But our heads are all in the basket trying to come up with ways to be better and produce better results.”