Wallace was born in Mobile, Alabama, and raised in Concord, North Carolina. He started racing Bandolero and Legends cars at age nine, winning 35 of 48 Bandolero races in 2005 and in 2008 becoming the youngest driver ever to win at Franklin County Speedway in Virginia.
As part of NASCAR's Drive for Diversity program, Wallace entered the K&N Pro Series East in 2010 for Rev Racing. He won his very first race at Greenville-Pickens Speedway, becoming the youngest winner in series history and the first African American to win the Rookie of the Year award in any NASCAR series. Signed as a development driver by Joe Gibbs Racing, he made his Nationwide Series debut in 2012.
Wallace joined Kyle Busch Motorsports for the 2013 Camping World Truck Series season. On October 26, 2013, he won the Kroger 200 at Martinsville Speedway, the first African-American driver to win in a NASCAR national series since Wendell Scott in 1963. In 2014, he won four Truck Series races including back-to-back Martinsville events and the season finale at Homestead, finishing third in the championship.
Wallace moved to Roush Fenway Racing in the Xfinity Series from 2015 to 2017, achieving multiple top-five finishes before the team suspended operations due to sponsorship issues partway through 2017.
Wallace made his Cup Series debut mid-2017, substituting for injured Aric Almirola at Richard Petty Motorsports in the iconic No. 43. He became the first African-American to race in the Cup Series since Bill Lester in 2006. Retained full-time for 2018, he finished second at the Daytona 500 — the highest finish ever for a full-time rookie in that race — beating Denny Hamlin by .002 seconds.
After four seasons at RPM, Wallace moved to the newly created 23XI Racing for 2021. On October 4, 2021, at Talladega Superspeedway, he earned his first career Cup win after the race was shortened by rain, becoming the first African-American Cup winner in 58 years. He scored his second victory at Kansas Speedway in September 2022, leading the final 67 laps. His 2023 season was the first time he qualified for the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs.
In 2025, Wallace won the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, making him the first Black driver to win a major race on the Indianapolis oval.
Wallace emerged as one of NASCAR's most prominent advocates for social justice. In June 2020, he publicly called on NASCAR to ban the Confederate battle flag at its events; NASCAR announced the prohibition within days. At the 2020 GEICO 500 at Talladega, a noose-shaped pull rope was reported in his garage stall. An FBI investigation concluded the rope had been there since 2019 and was not directed at Wallace, but the incident and the subsequent support from his fellow drivers — who pushed his car to the front of pit road before the race — underscored the broader conversation about race in American motorsport.
Wallace ran a Black Lives Matter tribute paint scheme at the 2020 Martinsville race and received support from figures including Lewis Hamilton and Hank Aaron during his early years. He was named in Ebony magazine's Power 100 list in 2018. The Netflix docuseries Race: Bubba Wallace, released in 2022, chronicled his career and activism across six episodes.
Wallace married Amanda Carter on December 31, 2022. The couple have a son and daughter together. He has spoken openly about dealing with depression throughout his racing career and is a devout Christian. He voiced the character Bubba Wheelhouse in the 2017 Pixar film Cars 3.