Matt DiBenedetto gets best career Xfinity finish
NEWTON, Iowa — Matt DiBenedetto earned his and Viking Motorsports’ best career NASCAR Xfinity Series finish Saturday at Iowa Speedway.
Coming into the day, DiBenedetto was seventh-fastest in practice but started 24th after rain canceled qualifying.
“Right from the get-go in practice I was like, ‘Man, this thing has speed.’ And it really drove good. Then in the race, it handled good. We were good on long runs. We kind of played the long game, where I’d have to sacrifice on the short run and be free. And then to be good in the long run and we really didn’t want to blow a right-front, so that played into our favor,” DiBenedetto said.
The partial repave led to higher tire wear. The wear meant 34 and 31 laps were the longest green-flag runs of the first half of the 250-lap race.
At halfway, DiBenedetto sat 18th. When stage three went green on lap 133, he ran around 11th-15th. DiBenedetto raced with Richard Childress Racing drivers Austin Hill and Jesse Love and Joe Gibbs Racing drivers John Hunter Nemechek and Brett Moffitt.
Love had tire issues and wrecked out of the race, drawing a caution on lap 161.
Back under green, DiBenedetto pitted for tires and fell two laps down with a possible issue on lap 197.
Six laps later, Allgaier popped a right-front tire exactly where Love did, triggering a caution on lap 203.
DiBenedetto took the wavearound but he wasn’t done yet. Three more cautions fell on laps 219, 231 and 246, respectively. On lap 231, DiBenedetto earned the free pass and got back on the lead lap in 16th. In overtime, he charged to seventh at the checkered flag.
“My crew chief, Kevin, did a good job tightening it up when we took tires so we could take off faster in the short run, which we knew we’d need at the end there for the restart. And then, sure enough, we made the most of those and drove by a bunch of them and were really aggressive and ended up seventh,” DiBenedetto said.
DiBenedetto’s and Viking Motorsports’ previous-best finish was eighth at Talladega Superspeedway in April. Before that, with Joe Gibbs Racing in 2010, DiBenedetto finished ninth at Iowa Speedway and tenth at Nashville Superspeedway.
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Jonathan Fjeld View All
Jonathan Fjeld is the co-owner of the The Racing Experts, LLC. He has been with TRE since 2010.
A Twin Valley, MN, native, Fjeld became a motorsports fan at just three years old (first race was the 2002 Pennsylvania 500). He worked as a contributor and writer for TRE from 2010-18. Since then, he has stepped up and covered 24 NASCAR race weekends and taken on a larger role with TRE. He became the co-owner and managing editor in 2023 and has guided the site to massive growth in that time.
Fjeld has covered a wide array of stories and moments over the years, including Kevin Harvick's final Cup Series season, the first NASCAR national series disqualification in over 50 years, Shane van Gisbergen's stunning win in Chicago and the first Cup Series race at Road America in 66 years – as well as up-and-coming drivers' stories and stories from inside the sport, like the tech it takes for Hendrick Motorsports to remain a top-tier team.
Currently, he resides in Albuquerque, N.M., where he works for KOB 4, an NBC station. He works as a digital producer and does on-air reports. He loves spending time with friends and family, playing and listening to music, exploring new places, being outdoors, reading books and writing among other activities. You can email him at fjeldjonathan@gmail.com