Bubba Pollard is trying something different for awhile

Bubba Pollard says he’s just kind of floating right now.

For the second race in a row, Pollard is now driving Tony Elrod’s Hamke Race Cars No. 08. No seriously, if you look at the No. 26 font, the 08 is still there in bottom right. For ASA STARS owner points, it has to be a No. 26 but for all intent and purpose, this is still the No. 08.

That’s not the only thing that’s unusual about this weekend when considering Pollard is driving a Hamke chassis in the first place.

“Because I always say I do the opposite of everyone else,” Pollard interjected.

Right?

Pollard has four cars in his race shop right now and none of them belong to him. He also listed his hauler for sale on Wednesday morning so there is clearly a lot of something going on at Pollard Motorsports but Bubba also has a difficult time articulating it because he isn’t totally sure what direction everything is going either.

“I don’t know,” Pollard told Short Track Scene on Wednesday. “There’s a lot going on to not know anything about what’s going on, if that makes sense.”

That doesn’t make a lot of sense, no.

“We got back from Five Flags (and Mobile) and we really took a little time off,” Pollard said. “I’ve been kind of frustrated a little bit with some things, not having fun.

“Even though we started the year off good, I just really wasn’t happy and a little frustrated so we took some time off, ran our dirt car, and had some fun with Capital Race Cars and we’re still going to do a little bit of that over the next couple of weeks and months.

“My program is in a rebuild stage, I guess right now.”

Pollard continued for another couple of minutes talking about how, even though he’s won races, they came at tracks that fit his car with the new tire, but then came tracks where he wasn’t as competitive as he wanted to be.

“We’ve changed a lot, and I know I just keep talking here, but we’ve made some changes to hopefully get better with these tires at some of these places. When we get our engines back, they’ll all be fresh, and we’ll have two fresh race cars.

“So, we’re just kind of starting over with the basics.”

Pollard has always teased retiring as a driver-owner if he ever wins the Snowball Derby, now a two-decade long endeavor, so has the past two months accelerated those considerations?

“I enjoy doing what we do with our team but, you know, there’s a lot,” Pollard said. “If I win a Derby … I’m going to be dumb and my sister is going to be mad at me, my parents are going to mad at me …

He laughed.

“I’m just ready for something different, and I don’t mean this to sound bad so this is where Andrea is going to get onto me for saying this, but I don’t know. The people we race with now is just different — there’s nothing but crybabies in this pit area and I get tired of going and hearing that my car is this, and my car is that, and it’s just bullshit all the time.

“It’s just part of it I guess, and I don’t like no one; I just come here to race but I’m kind of over it and ready for something different.”

Driving a Tony Elrod Hamke certainly constitutes as different.

For his part, Elrod is stoked to have a racer the caliber of Pollard in his car. For one, there is mutual respect between Elrod and Pollard as family teams trying to make hay against big multicar teams with manufacturer alliances.

“When we were leading the race at Mobile with Bubba in the car, I had the opportunity to enjoy that from the hauler and with my family,” Elrod said. “I wouldn’t have been able to enjoy it that way if I was in the car but it’s really special having a decorated name in the car.”

It sounds like Pollard and Elrod are going to be a combination for at least the next two months or so.

“You never know,” Pollard said. “We don’t know what we’re doing, where we’re headed right now. Our goal is to get our family deal back going. Maybe it could be like a deal where we merge and use both teams.

“It’s hard running up and down the road each week going to races and having people to help. I enjoy being around Tony and his family. They do it as a family a lot like we do and I respect that’s what they’re all about.

“There are teams that, I wouldn’t say they are better, but they have more of a foundation. I like doing this with a family team, they work hard, and go to the race track and sometimes it’s just the four of them. So hopefully we can run good this week and give them something to get behind and where it all ends up, we’ll kind of see.”