Bubba Wallace wins at Talladega, becomes second Black driver to win NASCAR Cup race

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Bubba Wallace wins at Talladega, becomes second Black driver to win NASCAR Cup race

Associated Press | 4:29 PM ET

TALLADEGA, Ala. -- The hard part wasn't dodging his way around a crash and then driving to the front of the field at Talladega Superspeedway. That was just instinct for Bubba Wallace.

The challenge was the 45 minutes after Wallace took the lead, when the sky opened and he anxiously sat in the rain -- hoping, wishing, praying -- that NASCAR would call off Monday's rescheduled race and declare him the winner.

With a crowd gathered behind his pit stand chanting its support -- one man told his 6-year-old son, clad in a Wallace shirt and jumping up and down along the fence, that he was "witnessing history" -- NASCAR pulled the plug and Wallace became just the second Black driver to win a race at the Cup Series level.

"Got some credibility to my name now," said Wallace, a first-time Cup winner in his 143 starts. "I'm just like, 'Finally, I'm a winner and I'm a winner in the Cup level,' and it's just like 'Hell yeah!' It was a huge weight lifted off my shoulders."

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