![](\"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/files\/2020\/02\/img_0696.jpg\")
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Matt DiBenedetto and his Wood Brothers team, fresh off a second-place finish at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Sunday, are headed to Auto Club Speedway with their iconic No. 21 Mustang carrying the green colors of Menards and Quaker State for the first time this season.<\/p>\n
And DiBenedetto, who enters the weekend 10th<\/sup>in the Cup Series point standings, carries with him the confidence that comes from having a fast Ford at Las Vegas.<\/p>\n \u201cDaytona is really its own animal,\u201d DiBenedetto said. \u201cLas Vegas was our first of what I\u2019d call a normal weekend and a pretty good indicator of how we\u2019ll be going forward.\u201d \u201cWe kept getting our cars better and got ourselves a second-place finish,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n That result, coupled with his Daytona finish of 19th<\/sup>, put him in the top 10 in points for the first time in his Cup career.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s always important to get a good points position firing off,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n DiBenedetto, who scored his Cup-career-first top 10 on an intermediate track at Las Vegas, said the speed of his Menards Mustang had a lot to do with that and should be a plus this weekend as well.<\/p>\n \u201cWith my previous teams, my strength was usually on the short tracks and road courses,\u201d he said \u201cNow we have speed every week.\u201d<\/p>\n The Grass Valley, Calif., native will be racing on one of his home-state tracks this weekend and says he enjoys driving on the D-shaped, two-mile track that has been hosting races since 1997.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a big track, but it\u2019s unique in that there\u2019s a lot of sliding around,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s more fun to drive when the lap times fall off.\u201d<\/p>\n He said the back straightaway also is different than other tracks.<\/p>\n \u201cTurns Three and Four are bumpy, but the back straightaway is like going over jumps,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Qualifying for the Auto Club 400 is set for Saturday at 11:35 a.m. (2:35 p.m. Eastern Time) and the race is scheduled to start just after 12:30 p.m. on Sunday (3:30 Eastern) with TV coverage on FOX.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Matt DiBenedetto and his Wood Brothers team, fresh off a second-place finish at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Sunday, are headed to Auto Club Speedway with their iconic No. 21 Mustang carrying the green colors of Menards and Quaker State for the first time this season. And DiBenedetto, who enters the weekend 10thin the Cup […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23501,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,788],"tags":[946],"coauthors":[675],"class_list":{"0":"post-23502","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cup-series","8":"category-news","9":"tag-matt-dibenedetto"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23502\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23502"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=23502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nHe said there was good communication between him, crew chief Greg Erwin, spotter Doug Campbell and the rest of the Menards team at Las Vegas throughout the weekend.<\/p>\n