Armstrong Looks to Improve at Texas with Top-10 Finish

Texas Motor Speedway is one of the tracks on the NASCAR Nationwide Series schedule that Sunoco Rookie driver, Dakoda Armstrong has the most experience in a stockcar. He has one ARCA Racing Series start at the mile-and-a-half track, earning a 12th-place finish in 2010.  

The 22-year-old also has three NASCAR Camping World Truck Series starts at the Fort Worth track. His best start of 12th came in the fall race in 2013, and he earned his best finish of 11th in the spring of that year. As an organization, Richard Petty Motorsports’ best Nationwide finish at Texas is ninth, which Michael Annett earned in 2012.  

Using what they learned in Las Vegas and Fontana last month, Armstrong will look to top his best finish at the track of 11th from 2013 and earn a top-10 this time around.  

At @TXMotorSpeedway, @DakodaArmstrong looks to improve on best finish of 11th at the 1.5-mile track to top-10 this weekend. #NASCAR  

@Dakoda Armstrong will go into this weekend’s race at @Texas Motor Speedway with more stockcar experience than most tracks. With one ARCA start and three @NASCAR Camping World Truck starts, he earned his best finish of 11th at this 1.5-mile track in the truck series last spring. He’ll look to top that with a top-10 finish this weekend.

“Texas is a different track.  It’s one of those places that is kind of hard to hit. I’ve had some good runs there and some not so good runs there.  It wears out tires pretty quickly on long runs, so the grip goes away after a few laps, but it’s also very, very fast. It’s one of those places that we’ll be wide open on a qualifying run and then when we get into a long race run we’ll probably slow up about a second and a half and have to get out of the gas. You have to have the perfect amount of grip and get your car to turn without getting it too tight. It’s a touchy race track, but you can move around a lot.

“We learned a lot in Las Vegas to help us going into Texas. They are similar in that the grip doesn’t last as long as some of the other tracks, so even though they are both fast tracks, you will definitely slow down during the a longer run. We’re getting deeper into the schedule, so hopefully we can take what we learn at some of the tracks that we’ve already ran and use it at these tracks that are coming up, things like the best way to make a pass and how to use the aero to your advantage. I think we can use some of that information from Vegas and apply it this weekend. “

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