Bubba Wallace Drives COVID-19 Vaccine Car at Talladega

Bubba Wallace will run a paint scheme sponsored by a COVID-19 vaccine during this weekend’s race at Talladega Superspeedway. The 23XI Racing driver’s No. 23 Toyota Camry XSE will carry branding for Kroger Health and Nuvaxovid, a protein-based COVID-19 vaccine, at the Alabama track.

The Talladega paint scheme reveal

NASCAR writer Joseph Srigley shared the sponsor details and paint scheme on X on Wednesday. The announcement immediately drew significant online attention given the combination of a vaccine sponsor and the sport’s fanbase. Nuvaxovid is characterized as a non-mRNA vaccine. Wallace competes with a rotating group of primary sponsors throughout the Cup Series season, including Columbia and Hardee’s, though NASCAR’s official paint scheme preview lists the vehicle as the No. 23 Kroger Health Toyota for the Alabama event.

Wallace’s history at the Alabama speedway

Talladega Superspeedway has hosted several defining moments in Wallace’s racing career. In October 2021, he secured his first Cup Series victory in a rain-shortened race at the track, marking the first time a Black driver won a Cup race since Wendell Scott in 1963. The venue was also the site of a high-profile controversy in June 2020, when a team member reported a noose in Wallace’s garage stall, prompting fellow drivers and crew members to push his car to the front of pit road in solidarity.

An FBI investigation later determined that Wallace was not the target of a hate crime, concluding the rope was a garage door pull that had been in place since the previous fall. However, NASCAR noted that Wallace’s stall was the sole instance among 11 checked with a knotted pull-down rope tied into a noose, and confirmed that Wallace and his team had no involvement with it. Born in Mobile, Alabama, Wallace has continued to face vocal backlash from segments of the NASCAR fanbase in the years following those events.