HAMPTON, Ga. -- Darrell "Bubba" Wallace Jr. has other things to worry about beyond whether he will get to play in Denny Hamlin's popular recreational golf and basketball leagues.
Performance -- not a beef with one of the sport's veterans -- needs to be Wallace's focus now that the NASCAR Cup Series shifts to racetracks that don't rely on the draft to get to the front. The first race is set for this Sunday at Atlanta Motor Speedway (2 p.m. ET, Fox).
Wallace did everything asked of him at Daytona, including earning a second-place finish in the Daytona 500. He even did a little more than asked, making a quip that engulfed him and Hamlin into a personal dispute.
Following the Daytona 500 and a crash between the two drivers after the checkered flag, Wallace quipped: "He might need to take some Adderall for that one."
Hamlin, who said he was joking during a podcast when he estimated 70 percent of drivers used Adderall to focus, didn't like the comment and the two had a brief shouting match outside the media center afterward.
Wallace didn't take too kindly to their war of words.
"I removed myself from the basketball league just after the conversation we had that day," Wallace said. "I was like, 'Whatever, I guess I'm not coming back.' That is OK."
And the golf league?
"I didn't get the direct text," said Wallace, adding that his text to Hamlin went unanswered. "It went through like five or six people. That is classy, I guess. ... I have been told the golf league was out."
Hamlin said Friday night he, too, will move on.
"I don't really have anything to add," Hamlin said. "It's over with. I'm moving on. Trust me, it's done.
"[The perception of fans more on Bubba's side] doesn't concern me. I am just going to keep moving forward and try to do the best I can and let whoever tell their side and let it be."
Some might advise a rookie against getting into a spat with a veteran, but Wallace's Richard Petty Motorsports team didn't seem to mind.
"Until it affects our finish, I don't really care about that part," Wallace crew chief Drew Blickensderfer said. "He's fiery. And I like to have somebody like that. He's passionate and he cares."
Blickensderfer hopes the second-place finish doesn't fuel expectations beyond Wallace's control. The team was 24th in the owner standings last year. It had hovered from 17th to 20th in the standings until Aric Almirola got hurt in May.
"Our expectation is to be where we were when Aric got hurt," Blickensderfer said. "We were right on the edge of the Chase via points, and I think that is what this race team can do. Everything after Aric got hurt was a blur."
The team is one in transition. It switched manufacturers from Ford to Chevrolet and moved shops to the Richard Childress Racing campus.
"We want to be as good or better than we were on mile-and-a-halves last year," Blickensderfer said. "That would be a huge improvement for having a new manufacturer and rookie driver.
"Running 16th isn't a bad day for us on Sunday, but I think it would look like a bad day to a lot of people after last week."
Blickensderfer says the goal early on is to be a 15th-to-18th-place car. Wallace said he and Petty were in a car Thursday talking about expectations, and Petty is aiming a little higher.
"He wants to improve to a top-eight, to a top-12 team," Wallace said. "And I'm like, 'OK, that's right in the ballpark I was saying. I was saying top-10 to top-15, so he says ... there are going to be days where we are better than that, and there's going to be days when we're worse than that.
"But we all have to keep in once piece and bring it home and let us work on it and not get behind."
The team now will try to seize on that opportunity.
"For a team that is low on people and working so many hours to get to the racetrack, for it to come out the way it did last Sunday night was about as good as it could come out," said Blickensderfer, whose team added a seventh person in the shop this past week.
"Although we're scared now [of expectations], we're in a much better place than we could have been. ... As a company, I'm not sure we could have done anything more to provide more good press for Bubba and Richard Petty Motorsports."
Wallace is a different person than when he drove those four races for Petty, according to good friend Ryan Blaney. After Almirola returned, Wallace didn't have a ride, as Roush Fenway had closed his Xfinity Series team for a lack of sponsorship.
The now-24-year-old Wallace had no idea of his 2018 plans -- or if there would be 2018 plans -- last July.
"He proved that Sunday when he was able to kind of put all this behind him and just go out there and race," Blaney said. "I don't think he could have handled that a few years ago.
"I think he's matured a lot over the past two or three years. And, honestly, I feel like him sitting out a little bit last season really matured him a lot and made him appreciate the chances that he gets and the opportunities, and I think that humbled him a lot and made him grow up."
While Wallace drove four races for the team in 2017 in place of Almirola, Blickensderfer learned more about his driver while at Daytona International Speedway, where there was an intense media focus on Wallace being the first full-time African-American driver in NASCAR since Wendell Scott in 1971.
"When the 24-year-old takes his helmet off and gets in the lounge, it is strictly business," Blickensderfer said. "Then he goes back to being Bubba as soon as he's out.
"He's very mature for his age and he handles everything around him. There's a lot of kids that would be freaking out over everything that was going on."
Apparently, Wallace came a little close to getting overwhelmed. During the week at Daytona, Blaney received a call from Dale Earnhardt Jr. about Wallace.
"He was like, 'Hey, I need you to go call Bubba and calm him down because I think he was getting really overwhelmed with all the media and the pressure that was kind of being bestowed upon him, and we haven't even got started yet,'" Blaney said.
"[Wallace] and I had a little bit of a talk and not really a talk, but just trying to relax him and telling him that he deserves to be here and don't let all that other stuff -- it's a good thing that he's getting recognized in all forms of TV and entertainment and media and don't see it as pressure, see it as a well-deserved opportunity that he got."
Wallace in some ways did relish the moment. His racing shoes for the Daytona 500 were inscribed with the date for his first Daytona 500.
He has a new pair of shoes for this weekend.
"[I asked] our PR person, 'Hey, do we have another pair of shoes we can throw on?'" Wallace said. "She's like, 'No, but we can get them.' So, we got them.
"We have a black pair now. Those were special for that week. We'll put those up and be able to look back on those and say I remember when."