Bubba Wallace could run Chicagoland Cup Series race with Nickelodeon sponsorship

The bigger question is which team would field a car for him.

Bubba Wallace has been the NASCAR equivalent of a man without a country for a few weeks now. The affable 23-year-old driver got a dream opportunity earlier this season when Richard Petty Motorsports tapped him to fill in for the injured Aric Almirola in the fabled No. 43, a stint that lasted four races over five Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series stops.

Unfortunately, there was bit of a nightmare going at the same time, as Roush Fenway Racing shut down his XFINITY Series team, choosing to go with the locked-into-the-playoffs ride of Ryan Reed. That meant that when Almirola returned, as he did at New Hampshire, Wallace was left completely without a ride in any series.

But maybe not for the duration. Adam Stern of SportsBusiness Journal (via Jayski) tweeted earlier today that there was at least a chance that Wallace could run the Tales of the Turtles 400 a few weeks from now at Chicagoland Speedway.

Nickelodeon makes sense since it’s also the title sponsor of the Cup Series race at Chicagoland as the owner of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles brand. A bigger question would be for which team, as several users asked Stern without getting a response.

There have been reports that RPM would field a second car for Wallace for the 2018 NASCAR Cup Series season, but as with most things in the sport these days, it would depend on the sponsorship situation. Given that he’d be coming with a sponsor for this one-off opportunity, it’s also not completely inconceivable that a team losing a driver in ’18 might give him a shot — like, say, Furniture Row, which loses Erik Jones from the 77 at the end of this season.

Whatever the case may be, the popular Wallace should have plenty of fan support if he gets another shot this season. In fact if that’s all it took, to make the stars align, you can bet he’d be in the field at Chicagoland.

Here’s hoping …