“I ain’t gonna hang my head over that one.” Bubba Wallace’s statement after last Sunday’s Homestead race contained a bright truth in it. Ever since the 31-year-old Alabama native joined 23XI Racing in 2021, he has faced enormous criticism. Thanks to slow stops and a few laughable on-track mishaps, NASCAR fans never expected the #23 team to succeed. However, that narrative seems to be wildly changing, even if that means borrowing something from Rick Hendrick’s fold.

Hendrick Motorsports is indubitably the leader in the NASCAR Cup Series. Boasting 14 championships and 313 race wins, Rick Hendrick’s Cup drivers usually define the peaks of speed. However, Bubba Wallace stole their sparkle recently – after stealing an integral part of Hendrick’s crew.

Crafting the team to crack the game

We all saw the force that the No. 23 Toyota team brought to South Florida the past weekend. Bubba Wallace wheeled his car to stamp the fastest speed during practice on Saturday. He clocked in at 166.955 mph on his first lap. This was hardly the end of his thunder. After rolling off the 9th starting spot, Wallace slowly wove his way to the front row during the Straight Talk Wireless 400. The most notable part of his race, as people thought, was toppling Homestead favorite Kyle Larson’s pace toward the end of the race. However, another jaw-dropping aspect of the #23 team’s performance was recently revealed on social media.

Bubba Wallace and his No. 23 pit crew broke a NASCAR record on Sunday. A pit stop under yellow witnessed them tie a record of Joe Gibbs Racing’s No. 19 team. Journalist Bozi Tatarevic spilled the beans on X: “The No. 23 pit crew of @BubbaWallace completed a four-tire pit stop in just 8.22 seconds yesterday. This ties them with the No. 19 crew for the second fastest NASCAR pit stop of all time.” What is more interesting is that this amazing result came after Wallace’s crew recruited a key insider of Rick Hendrick’s team.

Jon Carvin, the former head pit crew coach at Hendrick Motorsports, headed to 23XI Racing. Tatarevic updated this piece of update as soon as he got to know about it from the upcoming Martinsville race roster. He wrote on X: “Looks like @23XIRacing has hired @JonCarvin as a pit crew coach based on the Martinsville roster. Carvin was previously head pit crew coach at @TeamHendrick where he spent almost a decade after coming to NASCAR from coaching football.”

This is only the latest upgrade that the No. 23 Toyota team adopted. One major overhaul over the off-season involved long-time crew chief Bootie Barker making way for Charles Denike. The competitive NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series crew chief has proved his mettle already. Bubba Wallace began the 2025 season with a bang, winning the Duel 1 race at Daytona.

Although a slew of finishes outside the top 20 marred his performance, Wallace regularly led laps on the racetracks. After his podium finish in Homestead, Denike patted Wallace on the back: “Really proud of you. Really proud of everybody. Great work today. We did what we said we wanted to do from Vegas, and that’s see the race all the way through.” Well, the team’s run at Homestead-Miami gave some funny radio conversations.

When Ryan Blaney’s car blew up into smoke, he was heard saying, “I’m f—— blowing up or something! You gotta be f—— me!” Bubba, who followed closely behind informed it to Crew Chief Freddie Kraft saying, “Ryan blew up. Uff, another one!” When Kraft came back with, “Yup!” Bubba said, “That will be a fun plane ride back.” Although Bubba Wallace and Charles Denike are in a new partnership, they are already excelling. This is mainly due to a 2 AM realization by a top 23XI executive.

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Picking the right seeds to plant a healthy tree

The greatest ideas always come at odd hours. For Dave Rogers, Competition Director at 23XI Racing, it happened at 2 A.M. While dealing with a sleepless night sometime at the end of last season, Rogers “was trying to find who is the next (Cup) crew chief coming from the Truck Series.” So that is how his eyes fell upon Charles Denike while hunting for the perfect crew chief for the 23 team. Rogers’ research revealed that Denike had been in the Truck Series since 2020. In 2022, he moved to McAnally-Hilgemann Racing, where his pairing with Christian Eckes proved phenomenal. Last season, the No. 19 truck, piloted by Christian Eckes, won four races and had 22 top tens in 23 races.

Charles Denike had also been in the U.S. Army for nine years as an engineer officer. That convinced Dave Rogers that Bubba Wallace may be getting a perfect fit from 2025. Rogers admitted to his certainty: “I just started watching tape and listening to audio. It was like, ‘Wow, this Christian Eckes guy is coming along pretty good. What’s going on here? Looked up the (team) roster, Who is the crew chief. I learned it was Charles Denike, and I just started researching the progress that team had made and (it was like), ‘Wow, this is interesting.’ He took a team and really helped build it. If you think about 23XI, that’s what we’re doing right now.”

As we can see, Charles Denike is already spilling gold with Bubba Wallace. We cannot wait to see the #23 team perform more wonders on the racetrack!