Perplexed Matt DiBenedetto betting on Las Vegas Motor Speedway rebound

Matt DiBenedetto’s final season with Wood Brothers Racing is not going as planned. After the first three races, his best finish is a P28, which came a week ago in Miami. His performances this season are crucial to where he lands next year.

The Wood Brothers team brought back Matt DiBenedetto for one more year to fill the gap until Austin Cindric takes over the famed No. 21 full-time next year. The 2021 campaign was supposed to be the Californian’s calling card for a better ride as he becomes a free agent. Matt DiBenedetto will be 30 in July, and this could be his best and last chance for a long-term contract.

Welcome to Sim City! 🎲Round 3 of the eNASCAR @CocaColaRacing iRacing Series is LIVE from the virtual @LVMotorSpeedway.📺: https://t.co/pKBfkg6Ln4 pic.twitter.com/hyF6woP1oQ

— NASCAR (@NASCAR) March 3, 2021

With February in the rearview mirror, Matt DiBenedetto hopes March will bring better results, starting at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. But was he looking too far into the future that caused him to have such a miserable first month of the season?

“Even before the season started, I was looking forward to March,” DiBenedetto said in a WBR release. “This is the start of a good stretch of tracks for us.”

Matt DiBenedetto has nothing to show for in any points-paying event since his first Cup race in 2015. However, he had a victory in the exhibition All-Star Open at Bristol Motor Speedway last July. After 215 starts and just six top-fives, his resume is pretty thin. His Xfinity Series record is not much better, with only two top-ten finishes in 69 starts. One would have to go back to 2011 for his last visit to victory lane, which was in the K&N Pro Series East Series.

Matt DiBenedetto needs to be all-in at Las Vegas Motor Speedway

Las Vegas Motor Speedway has been a disaster for Matt DiBenedetto until last year, where he finished second in both races. Before that, he never finished higher than P21. In February, he was runner-up to Joey Logano, then finished behind Kyle Busch in September, giving Busch his only win in 2020.

“We had a shot to win both races at Las Vegas last year, and we still had room for improvement,” DiBenedetto said. “I can’t wait to get there and see how we stack up against the competition. We were strong there last year, and I’m hoping we have the same speed this year.”

If Matt DiBenedetto hopes to cash in his chips in Las Vegas, he will have to do it from the back of the field. His two second-place finishes came after starting P19, but he is slated to start P30 on Sunday. As there will be no qualifying, the starting grid is based on a metric of recent performances.

Like a 20% improvement over last week and we’re still in the 30’s pic.twitter.com/O2nSdj57B0

— Wood Brothers Racing (@woodbrothers21) March 3, 2021

“It hurts,” he said. “It really does. It messes up your early-race strategy as far as going for Stage points.” Stage breaks for the Pennzoil 400 Presented by Jiffy Lube are at laps 80 and 160. “Sometimes it’s well into the second or even the third Stage before you can work your way to the front. The [line-up] system puts you behind the Eight Ball, so you just have to go to work and overcome it.”

Matt DiBenedetto needs to have a good showing in the desert and use that momentum to turn his season around. There remain plenty of races to turn around a forgettable February.