XFINTIY Series rookies hope to continue success at Lilly Diabetes 250
Racing at Indianapolis Motor Speedway for the first time might be daunting enough, even for two NASCAR XFINITY Series rookies awash in midseason momentum. But when Daniel Suarez and Darrell Wallace Jr. touch down at the fabled Brickyard, the sense of the unknown will hinge on another sizable variable.
Saturday's Lilly Diabetes 250 (3:30 p.m. ET, NBC, IMS Radio, SiriusXM) will be the first for a new rules package for the XFINITY Series, which will emulate the high-drag aero setup that Sprint Cup cars will also use for the first time this season. But beyond the tweaked rules that await Suarez and Wallace is also the adjustment to racing at a historic 2.5-mile track with a layout like no other circuit on the NASCAR calendar.
"I'm really excited to get to Indy, another one of those places where I haven't been to, so it's going to be a pretty big challenge," Wallace said Monday during a whirlwind tour through New York City with Suarez and defending XFINITY champ Chase Elliott. "We have to not really focus on those first couple of runs on the car, it's more a focus on me of hitting the right marks and make sure I'm getting all out of the car that I can. You have to be on it but I'm excited to get to another big track for us.
"We're on a pretty good roll right now with three top-10s in the last four races, so we've just got to keep pressing forward."
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Wallace's streak of success in his first year in Roush Fenway Racing's No. 6 Ford has some competition with Suarez's recent tear. The Mexican-born driver of Joe Gibbs Racing's No. 18 Toyota has two straight top-five results on the XFINITY side heading to Indy and hasn't finished outside of the top 10 all season in his partial schedule (seven starts thus far) in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series.
The last time Suarez visited Indianapolis, he said he was 14 or 15 years old and still getting his motorsports career off the ground in go-karts. Now 23, he has designs on absorbing as many lessons as possible to keep his own rookie roll going.
"It was a long time ago and now we're coming back for the big race track with a big chance to get experience," Suarez said. "I'm excited about that and looking forward to this weekend, most of all to learn as much as possible on Friday. And after that, hopefully everything will be pretty good."
Suarez said he planned on doing his homework before Saturday's 250-miler, watching race film as part of his customary preparation. Wallace said he's already leaned on friends and fellow competitors Elliott and Ryan Blaney, each of whom have starts at the 2.5-mile speedway under their belts.
Standard prep work aside, both say they expect the high-drag rules package to add a new wrinkle to the build-up to Saturday's race. Both Wallace and Suarez said they approved of NASCAR potentially implementing track-specific packages based on the type of racing they saw with a lower-downforce setup for Sprint Cup cars two weekends ago at Kentucky Speedway.
But how will the Brickyard package race? Wallace said teams and drivers won't know for certain until cars hit the track for Friday's pair of practices.
"Hopefully we're ready for it and on top of our game," Wallace said. "They're trying to produce more racing, and I'm a fan of that. Just going to see how much different the cars are going to drive and how much different the speeds are getting into the corner. Talking with Chase and Ryan, they're talking about how it's almost wide-open there in some corners at Indy. So I don't know if we will be wide-open in (Turns) 2 and 4 or what, but that new package and that bigger spoiler will definitely reduce horsepower, so we'll just have to see how it goes."