Matt DiBenedetto posts first Top-10 of season
It took nine races, but Matt DiBenedetto picked up his first Top-10 finish of the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series season.
DiBenedetto took home a ninth-place finish in the Toyota Owners 400 Sunday (April 18) at Richmond Raceway, earning five stage points in the process.
“We worked on the car a little bit and made the right calls and got great breaks and once we got track position and got up in the Top-10 we had no problem staying up there,” DiBenedetto said.
“That was good. It was a really high pressure day because there was no room for mistakes with that much green flag here. I’m proud of the team.”
After Richmond, DiBenedetto jumped five spots in points and is now ranked 18th in points, the highest he has ranked in driver’s standings in 2021. However, he and his Wood Brothers Racing team are 39 points outside the playoff cutline.
“It’s tough,” DiBenedetto said. “There’s just a lot of guys that have won races and taken up some of those spots for the playoffs, so it makes it extra challenging.
“I know that we can keep on hitting our stride, running consistent, having consistent runs. Consistency is everything, so if we can do that, I have confidence we can climb up in the points where we belong because we’re just kind of getting going.”
The next race for the Cup Series is scheduled for Sunday, April 25 at Talladega Superspeedway.
SOURCES
Ford Performance
Racing-Reference.info
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Dominic Aragon View All
Dominic Aragon is currently the editor-in-chief for The Racing Experts.
From Grants, New Mexico, USA, Aragon started watching NASCAR in 2004 and has been covering the sport since 2009. Aragon is a 2012 graduate of Grants High School and a May 2016 graduate of the University of New Mexico with a B.A. in Mass Communications & Journalism. Aragon has worked in local and national media, as a musician, and an educator. He is co-author of the 2024 book "All of It: Daytona 500 Champion Tells the Rest of the Story" with racer Geoff Bodine.
Aragon, his wife Feliz, and son Christopher currently reside in Grants, New Mexico, USA.
You can reach Dominic at daragon@theracingexperts.net.