Bubba Wallace’s Bootie Barker relationship as | Sports News

Bubba Wallace admitted that parting methods with Bootie Barker was a powerful tablet to swallow, with the previous crew chief for the No. 23 crew now having fun with immense success alongside Corey Heim.

On Sunday, Heim secured his first Crown Jewel victory within the NASCAR Cup Series after narrowly beating Christopher Bell and Joey Logano to the end line at Indianapolis Motor Speedway — thereby changing into the youngest driver since Jeff Gordon in 1994 to win the Brickyard 400. Wallace, who completed twenty third, might solely marvel what may need been as he watched Barker information his 23XI Racing teammate to a second victory of the 2026 marketing campaign.

Back in October 2024, 23XI Racing introduced that Barker would call his last race for Wallace on the season finale at Phoenix Raceway. Yet the 55-year-old was robbed of a correct sendoff upon being suspended as a result of an incident from the week prior at Martinsville.

“I hate that Bootie’s last race with the 23 group has to be tarnished by [the penalty],” Wallace stated on the time. “Bootie has meant a lot to me in the short amount of time I’ve gotten to be with him the last three years. He’s become one of my best friends and I told him that when we made the decision to go a different direction.”

Charles Denike subsequently slotted in as Wallace’s crew chief for the 2025 season, whereas Barker transitioned to a new position on 23XI Racing’s competitors management crew. “It was brought to my attention and we had to look at what we needed to take the next steps,” Wallace added.

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“Bootie has done a tremendous job to get me and our team to where we’re at now. It was making that next step, ‘What do we need to do?’ It wasn’t an easy decision.

“I strive on a family atmosphere. I don’t know how you get more family than Bootie. To step away from that and move in a different direction is not something that I was ready to be a part of, but you have to make those decisions at some point.”

Last February, Barker returned to a crew chief place with Heim, who inked a multi-year contract as 23XI Racing’s development driver. It hasn’t taken long for the pair to develop a close bond, with the No. 67 Toyota driver telling reporters on Sunday: “Bootie is the man, for sure. He’s awesome, he’s one of the most liked, if not the most liked person at 23XI.

Heim admitted that he didn’t initially know how Barker would feel about working as a part-time crew chief following his tenure with Wallace. His concerns, however, were quickly dispelled. “When he came off of the full-time deal with Bubba and I knew that he was gonna be my part-time crew chief, I was like, ‘Oh man, I hope he doesn’t feel distraught about getting off the full-time deal or anything and has motivation,’” Heim recalled.

“And I quickly learned that he does not let anything bother him. He is just an eyes forward guy, super motivated, a family man. Just a very, very good person. So to have our off-track relationship be very strong, and then just to have faith that he can execute a race as well as he has done this year, and get us two wins so far.

“It’s not everyday you get to go to the race track and have comfort with the crew chief, just knowing that you can trust them with everything. I’ve had a lot of moments in my career where I doubt my crew chief a lot, but that’s just driver instinct. But when you can find a guy that just knows what they’re doing and you can trust them, it certainly makes it a lot easier.”