Bubba Wallace is expected to return to 23XI Racing for the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season, but a contract extension hasn’t yet been announced.

Bubba Wallace’s contract has not yet been extended by 23XI Racing, and it is due to expire at the end of the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season. Though all indications point toward Wallace returning to the team for a fifth season behind the wheel of the No. 23 Toyota, is there reason to believe he could be on the hot seat?

Wallace is the Denny Hamlin and Michael Jordan-owned team’s original driver. Jordan made clear that the team “don’t sign checks for losers” and that he believed in the talent of the Mobile, Alabama native shortly after the team announced their entry to the sport in late 2020 for 2021.

Wallace’s stint with the team has undoubtedly produced his highest level of Cup Series success. Though he didn’t make the playoffs in either season, he won at Talladega Superspeedway in 2021 and added another victory at Kansas Speedway in 2022. He then qualified for the playoffs for the first time in 2023.

But in 2024, he finds himself winless and outside of the provisional playoff picture, a picture that is becoming increasingly hard to break into with so many different winners, 12 to be exact, having emerged throughout the season.

What further complicates matters for Wallace is the success of Tyler Reddick, who has emerged as one of the series’ elite drivers since moving to 23XI Racing. He has already won more races since the start of last season than Wallace has since joining the team two years prior, and he very easily could be sitting on a three-race win streak as things stand right now.

The driver of the No. 45 Toyota is a contender on pretty much every race weekend, and he has clawed his way up to third place in the point standings. He is well within striking distance of the top spot. He owns 13 top 10 finishes compared to Wallace’s six and eight top five finishes compared to Wallace’s three.

Reddick outperformed Wallace last year as well, advancing to the round of 8 with two victories in his first season with the team. Wallace made the playoffs for the first time in his career as well, but on the owner side, it was the No. 9 Hendrick Motorsports team that got the 16th and final playoff spot over the No. 23 23XI Racing team.

In other words, had Chase Elliott not missed seven races, it would have taken a very miserable stretch of seven races from the 2020 champion to keep Wallace on the inside of the postseason bubble.

Even going back to 2022, which was Wallace’s first season with a teammate in what was then his fifth season as a full-time driver, he was outperformed by Kurt Busch, who had qualified for the playoffs thanks to his win at Kansas before having to withdraw due to injury. Wallace had six top 10 finishes during the regular season; a 43-year-old Busch had eight in six fewer races during what ended up being his final season in the sport.