Darrell Wallace Jr. ready for short-track racing

Now comes Bristol Motor Speedway, site of tomorrow's Drive to Stop Diabetes 300 (1:30 p.m. ET, FOX Sports 1) and the first true short-track race of the 2015 season for the series.
 
After a steady diet of larger tracks, the question of how his No. 6 Ford team will adapt to the tighter confines of the series' short tracks has yet to be answered. While Sprint Cup teams visited Martinsville Speedway last month, XFINITY Series teams get their first true dose of short-track competition here this weekend.
 
"Chad (Norris, crew chief) has talked about how they were a little bit of a struggle last year, but the year before that they were pretty fast," Wallace said Friday before cars got on the track at Bristol. "They're going to come back with a little different package than what they ran last year, so we'll just have to see.
 
"This place, you don't have to worry about having the car having that sheer speed like you do at a mile-and-a-half. You don't have to worry about that but you definitely have to have the … raw speed and see what we can do."
 
Wallace isn't the only Roush Fenway driver off to a strong start in the series – teammate Chris Buescher enters Saturday's race second in points while Ryan Reed, a winner in the season-opening race at Daytona, sits fifth.
 
Wallace made the move to RFR after two seasons with Kyle Busch Motorsports and sporadic XFINITY starts with Joe Gibbs Racing. He's coming off a career-best sixth-place finish last week at Texas Motor Speedway.
 
It will be his first Bristol start in the XFINITY Series, but not his Bristol debut, having run a handful of Late Model races on the 0.533-mile track in previous seasons.
 
Aerodynamics are of less importance at Bristol, a factor that puts more of the load the driver. "But still the car is a huge factor in what needs to happen here," he said.
 
"If you can't get off the corners here, you're not going to be fast. It's all about how you tackle it. That's where the driver part comes in and being able to maintain that is where the car comes in too, so it's a fair balance, but I'm just as anxious to see how we roll off here as you are."
 
Kyle Busch is the defending race champion. The JGR driver, who competes fulltime for the organization in the Sprint Cup Series, has been sidelined since breaking his right leg and left foot in a crash in the season-opening XFINITY Series race at Daytona.

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