{"id":40696,"date":"2025-08-02T01:24:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-02T01:24:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/40696\/"},"modified":"2025-08-02T01:24:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-02T01:24:10","slug":"nascar-2025-michael-jordan-told-to-stay-away-from-races-after-huge-indy-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/40696\/","title":{"rendered":"NASCAR 2025: Michael Jordan told to ‘stay away’ from races after huge Indy win"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michael Jordan<\/a> may well have had a hand in Bubba Wallace\u2019s epic NASCAR Cup Series<\/a> victory at Indianapolis on Sunday, he just didn\u2019t know it. <\/p>\n

\nWallace was a brilliant winner of the Brickyard 400 at IMS, holding off Kyle Larson<\/a> in a dramatic finish to snap a 100-race, three-year winless streak. <\/p>\n

\nREAD MORE: NASCAR enforces mandatory change for ALL Cup Series teams<\/a> <\/p>\n

\nWhile Wallace, shirtless and chugging from a champagne bottle, partied into the night postrace, 23XI team owner Jordan was not on hand to witness the celebrations. He did though talk at length with his 31-year-old driver about the long-awaited return to Victory Lane. <\/p>\n

Bubba on Indy win and the MJ factor<\/p>\n

\nSpeaking to Shannon Sharpe and Chad Ochocinco on the Nightcap podcast<\/a>, Wallace revealed: \u201cHe was just super proud man, really really proud and he was really happy for me. And I was bummed, I was bummed that he wasn\u2019t there. Because [Tyler] Reddick, teammate, he\u2019s got a win with MJ there – I think he\u2019s got multiple wins with MJ there – and my three wins he hasn\u2019t been there. But I thought that one would have been awesome.\u201d <\/p>\n

\nWhile Wallace was disappointed his boss wasn\u2019t there in person to witness him kiss the bricks Sunday night, he also thinks his absence might well be a good thing\u2026 <\/p>\n

\nHe continued: \u201cStay away! hey, I\u2019ve got three of them, you ain\u2019t there, that\u2019s fine with me. But I said \u2018man, I wish you were here\u2019 and he said \u2018well I\u2019ll have a drink for you in spirit\u2019 so that was super cool. <\/p>\n

\n\u201cHe\u2019s always watching, you guys know him, he could be doing so much other things with his time and money and effort. But he loves NASCAR, he\u2019s been a fan for so long. And he understands how hard it is, and he loves the process to see his team go through to get to the top.\u201d <\/p>\n

\nThat three-year winless streak might have had some team owners looking for a new driver, but Wallace spoke about the unwavering support he has received from Jordan. He added though that it did come with a warning as well. <\/p>\n

\n\u201cMJ has been super loyal to me and has been one of my biggest supporters and it\u2019s not every day where somebody can say that, right? And so I definitely don\u2019t take those words for granted. <\/p>\n

\n\u201cI appreciate that support but I also know that he also told me \u2018don\u2019t get comfortable, always keep pushing for more\u2019 and I\u2019m never the person to get comfortable because I am so competitive and I want to win every damn race we enter.\u201d <\/p>\n

Wallace had an \u2018oh s***\u2019 moment’<\/p>\n

\nWallace spoke in depth about how he clinched victory on Sunday, including an \u2018oh s***\u2019 moment and his desire for the race to go full distance to avoid the potential for any controversy. <\/p>\n

\n\u201cMan, the last 20 laps when we got the lead, honestly I didn\u2019t know how many laps were left. I thought it was way more than 20 laps to go. So when my spotter told me 20 to go, I said \u2018Oh s***, alright, we gotta get serious here, we got a chance\u2019. <\/p>\n

\n\u201cRain came through, had a little bit of a delay, had a red flag, but I told myself I didn\u2019t want to win it this way. I won Talladega like this in 2021 – you know much controversy that started – I wanted to win it fair and square, straight up, and get the 23 back to Victory Lane. And so I just stayed in the ready mindset.\u201d <\/p>\n

\nREAD MORE: Roger Penske issues official statement as ‘$135million’ sale confirmed<\/a><\/p>\n

Related\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michael Jordan may well have had a hand in Bubba Wallace\u2019s epic NASCAR Cup Series victory at Indianapolis…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40697,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[11573,2331,49,48,578,576,3631,25835,3844,4386,3004,634,8354,44,82],"class_list":["post-40696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-brickyard-400","tag-bubba-wallace","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-gpfans","tag-graham-shaw","tag-indianapolis","tag-kyle-larson","tag-michael-jordan","tag-nascar","tag-nascar-cup-series","tag-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40696\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}