Bubba Wallace latest NASCAR driver to adopt new puppy
Bubba Wallace is the latest NASCAR driver to adopt a new puppy.
Bubba Wallace is the latest NASCAR driver to adopt a new puppy this season, following Martin Truex Jr and his girlfriend Sherry Pollex several months ago.
This news was announced on Wallace’s Instagram on Friday, July 31, and previously covered by People Magazine.
Wallace and his girlfriend Amanda Carter just adopted Asher, an Australian Shepherd/Poodle mix, and very helpfully provided not only his name, but his heritage in the adoption announcement.
Bubba Wallace drives the No. 43 Chevrolet Camaro for Richard Petty Motorsports, and is the first full-time black driver in the top-level NASCAR Cup Series since Wendell Scott in the 1960s.
Besides this, he has also been very upfront about his battles with depression and racism, highlighted by most notably in late June by a noose in the garage at Talladega Superspeedway, and the negative backlash that resulted from a Black Lives Matter scheme the next week at Martinsville Speedway.
“I’m not even allowed in the garage because of COVID-19, I have strict orders to stay out of the garage,” he told People at the time. “So, I’d never seen it. And so, I knew how it was going to look and that’s the unfortunate side of how people are magically going to take that and place the blame on me.”
In lighter news, Bubba is also known for being friends with fellow Cup racers Ryan Blaney and Chase Elliott, as well as for his drumming skills.
In an interview with us here at Dog O’Day last year, Chase Briscoe estimated that about 75 percent of the drivers on the three national NASCAR series had dogs, most of whom brought them to the track each week, and ARCA West driver Brittney Zamora would totally do the same if she could. So Asher might not get to play with his fellow racer dogs as often as he’d like yet, but will have plenty of company once the pandemic is over.
Wallace entered the Cup Series in 2017 as a part-time substitute driver for his predecessor in the No. 43, Aric Almirola, who was out with a broken back following a Kansas Speedway crash, and took over full time in 2018.
He has six career wins in the Double-A level Gander Outdoors Truck Series, where he drove for behemoth Kyle Busch Motorsports, and then in the Triple-A level Xfinity Series he drove for a time with the storied team of Roush Fenway Racing.
RPM is a satellite team of the Richard Childress Racing organization, which was home to the legendary Dale Earnhardt.
Coming into Sunday afternoon’s Foxwoods Resort Casino 301 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, Wallace is within range of the playoff bubble at 19th in the standings with seven races to go in the regular season. He has three top 10s and a best of sixth at Las Vegas, and he’s on pace to finish a full four places better this year (19.8) than he did last year (23.9).
That might not sound like much improvement, but for an underfunded midpack team like RPM, it’s an incredible year-to-year jump.
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