Carrying the positive momentum forward, Darrell Wallace Jr. put together a solid performance on Friday night at Texas Motor Speedway, scoring a sixth-place finish. For Bubba, it marks his best finish of the season to date.
“Texas has been a good place to me,” Wallace commented. “I take that back, the fall race I’m still holding a grudge because we blew up in the truck, but it was a good bounce back off our little spring break there and from the California race.”
At Fontana, Wallace struggled throughout the afternoon, crossing the finish line in 12th.
“It’s a good sixth-place finish and I think it’s the best one for me in the XFINITY Series, so I’m glad to be able to do that with Roush Fenway and also having AdvoCare on board,” Wallace continued. “So that was an exciting night for us having those guys here and being able to put on a great show for them. I helped Brad (Keselowski) out on one of those restarts and pushed him out there, but we just got shuffled back there on the late runs and couldn’t get back up there.”
Wallace felt his biggest struggle of the night was getting stuck on the bottom groove of the track, which his No. 6 AdvoCare Ford couldn’t run that well.
“I hated the bottom,” he expressed. “I told Freddie Kraft, the spotter, ‘Get me up as clear as you can.’ Him and I have worked well together the last three or four years and he knows we work well on the top, so he cleared me as soon as possible, we were able to get a couple guys there and make some hay, but every time I got on the bottom I said I wasted like eight years down there, so I couldn’t get off the corner like the other guys could. I was losing a little bit of lateral (grip) all night long and it never helps when you’re trapped on the bottom.”
In his six starts this year for Roush Fenway Racing, Wallace has posted a top-15 finish in each of the events. Partnered up with crew chief Chad Norris, Wallace is proud of their performance, saying that they’re growing as a team and that’s the main thing to focus on right now.
“They keep bringing me fast Ford Mustangs to the race track and our time will come soon,” he added. “I’m excited for the next coming races, Bristol and Richmond. Those are good tracks to me. I’ve got to finish one spot better than Bristol last year to this guy, so I’ve got a little motivation going into there, so it will be fun.”
