Darrell Wallace Jr. turns in runner-up performance at Kentucky Speedway

Fresh on the heels of his win at Gateway Motorsports Park a couple weeks ago, Darrell Wallace Jr. kept the wheels turning in the right direction as he would finish second on Thursday night at Kentucky Speedway while his boss Kyle Busch picked up the victory.

Wallace took a shot at Busch on the final restart with 12 laps to go, getting underneath him going into turn one, however was unable to get by and ended up settling for second.

“He knew what he was doing,” Wallace Jr. said of Busch on the last restart. “He’s so cool to work with. He’s hard to beat, but I wouldn’t want to be with anyone else. I just try to keep making the most of it.”

Wallace added that with Busch, he’s so good because of one simple thing – experience.

“Coming up against guys that don’t have that much experience here, you’re going to stand out more,” Wallace said. ” That’s like me — I can’t really say going to run a go-kart race because I get beat doing that with kids weighing as much as anybody. It’s all about weight there. It’s just tough — it’s experience and that’s the biggest thing you can take from it. He can give you a whole rundown of things that he feels out there on the race track as to where I’m just feeling it for the first time and he already knows what to expect. I don’t and that’s just the biggest thing.”

While a second place finish shows on the scoring pylon, it wasn’t smoothly gotten as Wallace’s KBM team had to make an engine change before the first practice even got started. Though despite losing practice time, Wallace wasn’t worried as he was still solid during the pair of sessions and had a strong run going last year in his rookie season when a mistake took him out of contention. It showed on track as ‘Bubba’ qualified the truck second before finishing second.

As Wallace puts more laps in the books, he also gains experience and for some, it’s only a matter of time till he moves up the racing ladder to the Nationwide Series full-time. Wallace stated today that isn’t out there yet, but he has been in contact with Steve DeSouza (vice president Nationwide Series operations, Joe Gibbs Racing) and Joe Gibbs about the future. For now, Wallace’s focus on the Nationwide side is on his next opportunity, which will be Daytona next weekend.

“It’s cool to be back in the Nationwide Toyota Camry for Joe Gibbs Racing — another speedway race I know that, but I’m being optimistic about it and we’ll be just fine,” Wallace commented. “We had speed at Talladega and just have to stay out of harm’s way. That’s the biggest thing. With Coca-Cola and the new campaign of ‘Share a Coke,’ it’s cool to be able to kind of promote that program and they’re taking their iconic logos off the bottles and putting names like Chris and Bubba and Ben and everybody on there. It’s really neat to do that and huge shout out to Coca-Cola for giving me this opportunity to be back in the Nationwide Series again and also with Toyota — racing another Toyota Camry and hopefully get my streak of top-10s back alive in the Nationwide Series.”