For people outside of the motorsport world, there’s a pretty good chance the name “Bubba Wallace” comes with plenty of controversy. As the only Black man in the NASCAR Cup Series, Wallace took it upon himself to be the voice of racial justice in a historically white, Southern sport — and his name hit the headlines in a big way after a rope tied in the shape of a noose was found in his garage just after NASCAR banned the Confederate flags from race tracks due to Wallace’s influence. And a new Netflix docuseries called RACE dives into all of that.

RACE: Bubba Wallace is a six-part docuseries composed of episodes ranging between 44 and 50 minutes, and it predominately tracks Wallace’s 2021 career — though there are frequent flashbacks to 2020 as well as Wallace’s career in the lower tiers of NASCAR. And man is it good.

I made the mistake of turning on the first episode while I had about 20 minutes before I wanted to start dinner — a mistake only because that first 50-minute segment is so powerful that I wanted to binge the rest of the series all at once. In it, we get a very brief rundown of Wallace’s career, but it gets into the heavy stuff right away. Namely, the fact that Wallace felt compelled to speak out about what it means to be Black during 2020's sweeping racial justice protests.

RACE brings in outside analysts, Wallace’s family, and other NASCAR competitors and personnel in order to paint a comprehensive picture of Wallace, his career, and the nature of being Black in NASCAR from all fronts. You get the personal view. You get the perspective of the series overall, the media. You get the critical comprehension of Wallace as a figurehead for a larger movement. It’s hard not to be hooked.

If I’d been in charge of putting together this docuseries, there were some changes I would have made. There was a lot of focus on Wallace’s 2021 season with in-depth event coverage, which was fine — but I think the best parts of the documentary are the ones that contextualize Wallace’s career in the greater scheme of NASCAR and of history. Analysts like Jemele Hill, Michael Strahan, and W. Kamau Bell offer incredible insight into what it means to be Black in American sports, but I’d have loved to see so much more of them. And I’d also have loved to see more about history. Episode three offers a brief look into Wendell Scott’s career, but it could have been weaved a little more seamlessly into the entire documentary to provide a more comprehensive look at race in motorsport.

While the documentary does a great job showing all the data, decision-making, and media that go into competing in a single event, it also feels like the producers pushed past the really interesting, meaty, cultural topics to get to the track. Which doesn’t make for a bad docuseries — I just think it could have gone deeper.

If you want my personal opinion, I think it almost tried a little too hard to be like Formula One: Drive to Survive in the sense that it prioritized a season of on-track competition over the larger storylines at play. It’s not that that format is wrong for RACE — it’s just that Wallace’s career deserves a more critical look.

And if you’re wondering whether or not Michael Jordan, co-owner of Wallace’s 23XI team, makes an appearance... I hate to be the bearer of bad news. He does not. I understand that MJ is a busy man, but even a brief interview from a fellow Black man in sport could have really enriched the series. It’s not something you actively miss while watching RACE, though, in the sense that it detracts from your viewing experience. It’s more just something you would have liked to see.

Overall, RACE is a damn good docuseries. If you’re not a NASCAR fan, you’ll enjoy it. If you’re a NASCAR fan, it’s likely going to give you a much different perspective on the nature of of the series. It’s a really fascinating, human look at someone who has been desperately misunderstood for so many years, and if you don’t walk away from it with a greater appreciation for Wallace, then you must have been watching the wrong docuseries.