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As his sponsor for the past two years, DoorDash has brought Bubba Wallace a sense of financial and professional security that he hadn't always had prior to his ascension to NASCAR stardom. Last Sunday, it brought him one more thing: A slice of humble pie.

While the rest of the Cup Series field went to South Beach to race at Homestead-Miami Speedway, Wallace was left home and could only watch as another man drove his car and the racing world went on without him. After being run into the wall at Las Vegas, Wallace had hooked a left and intentionally wrecked Kyle Larson, and NASCAR responded by parking him for one week -- the price he had to pay for losing his head.

By Saturday, it was clear that Wallace had found his head again. And he'd found the racetrack again along with it, returning to the driver's seat of his 23XI Racing Toyota at Martinsville Speedway and sharing an appreciable perspective on his punishment with reporters in the garage area as it pertained to both him and the sport at large.

"I totally accept the penalty and the repercussions that come from my actions," Wallace said. "I talked to (NASCAR president Steve Phelps and chief operating officer Steve O'Donnell) and I said, 'Hey, I'm good with being the example if we can keep this consistent moving forward,' because it's happened multiple times this year and it's something that may continue to happen you know, for other drivers down the road.

"I definitely learned my lesson, but we have to be consistent with this no matter if it's here at Martinsville or if it's at Daytona or Talladega. We have to keep it consistent across the boards and across the series. That was the conversation, it was a good conversation."

Wallace shared that the most difficult part of his suspension was the loss of his normal routine, and the loss of an opportunity to compete in a Homestead race that he had been looking forward to. He stayed involved with his race team by helping to prepare substitute driver John Hunter Nemechek for last Sunday's event, but the incident had cost him the chance to take advantage of his team's strengths on mile-and-a-half racetracks.

And beyond the car, Wallace's behavior also cost him plenty more.

"I put myself in a bad light, I put our team in a bad light, our sponsors -- it's just something that I'm not proud of," Wallace said. "But moving on, moving forward and not allowed to make that mistake again."

Thankfully, it didn't cost him the support of car owners Denny Hamlin and Michael Jordan -- both of whom were "adamant" that Wallace could better handle the sort of situation he found himself in, but both of whom understood Wallace momentarily seeing red. It also didn't cost him his relationship with Larson -- Wallace said he spoke with Larson earlier this week, a conversation that both he and Larson characterized as a very positive one.

"I thought it went really well. I think we both moved on from it really fast," Larson told reporters. "It was good to have a talk. Good to just kind of talk over the frustrations and mistakes on both of our parts, and kind of move on and forget about it and get back to racing. I feel like we've raced really well together in the past, so I hope I don't make any more mistakes and we can continue to race good."

As Wallace returns to the Cup Series at one of his best racetracks -- he won twice at Martinsville in Truck Series competition, including his very first NASCAR win in 2013 -- he also tries to finish off the 2022 season by making amends for the Las Vegas incident, which has ended up tainting and overshadowing what has been the best stretch of races in Wallace's career.

Since the second half of the season began, Wallace's on-track performance has taken off. In 15 races since Atlanta in July, Wallace has four top fives, seven top 10s, his first career pole at Michigan and a vindicating victory at Kansas in September. But thanks to his right hook of Larson at Vegas, and the shoving match he initiated afterwards, Wallace runs the risk of that image and the damage it caused being the lasting memory that caps off his 2022 season and follows him into the offseason.

That is, unless he can change it this weekend at Martinsville or next week at Phoenix.

"The second half of this season has been really, really strong and the best of my career. Now I've kind of put a black light over this with this deal last week," Wallace said. "And I hate that because we still have the momentum on our side and a lot of things to do, and excited to be back at the track and with the team here."

Wallace will have a ways to go to continue that momentum on Sunday, as he turned in a 24th-place qualifying effort on Saturday.