Bubba Wallace and Riley Herbst wreck as 23XI brakes ‘explode’ at Pocono

Sunday’s NASCAR Cup race at Pocono Raceway was a forgettable one for 23XI Racing. The team battled brake issues, resulting in two destroyed race cars and a third just hanging on.

On Lap 41, Riley Herbst caused the first caution as his No. 35 Toyota slammed the wall. It looked like a flat tire at first, but the issue turned out to be a brake failure. Unfortunately, it was not an isolated incident as his teammate Bubba Wallace crashed even harder just 13 laps later after a brake rotor exploded on his No. 23 Toyota.

Both drivers were uninjured, but neither was able to continue. Wallace finished 36th and Herbst 37th, scoring just one point each.

“The brakes just went to the floor”

“Nothing,” said Wallace when asked if he had any warning inside the car. “I was going to battle the #17 [Chris Buescher] and the #2 [Austin Cindric] and by the time I was ready to touch the pedal it just went to the floor and the brakes exploded. I hate it, we’ve had two or three good races in-a-row and there goes the bad luck again. They told me there’s no such thing as bad luck, we create our own luck. I hate it for my guys. I hate it for McDonald’s.

“We knew it was going to be a grind and I was mentally prepared for that all day. As frustrating as it gets not being able to pass here in Pocono, we were going to just take our lumps and march our way through and set ourselves up for the end of the race, but the brakes just didn’t want to hang on that long.”

The DNF moves Wallace much closer to the cut line, just 29 points above the danger zone. As for Herbst, he was just as surprised by the issue. “I’ve grown up watching these races at Pocono and seeing what happened to me happen to lot of other guys. It was a scary feeling for sure. I was just starting to get tight, just a bad adjustment on my part. Getting into (Turn) one, the brakes just went to the floor. A brake rotor exploded and I was along for the ride with our Monster Energy Camry XSE.”

Their one remaining teammate on track was Tyler Reddick, who was warned about the issue. The No. 45 team opted to bring his car behind the wall to take a look at the brakes, hoping to avoid the same fate.

He did manage to finish the race, but Reddick was scored in 32nd.