Ricky Stenhouse Jr. was what many feel wrongfully dismissed out of his contract with Roush Fenway Racing too early. Stenhouse, was driving for a team that has struggled over the last several years but he’s the only driver to have won for them since Matt Kenseth and Carl Edwards left.

With a contract in place for 2020, RFR let him go late summer of last season. It gave the Mississippi native no time to find something else. Luckily, JTG Daugherty Racing had an opening and Stenhouse took it. So far, he’s embracing it and finally reaping the benefits of good race cars.

“Looking at the equipment that they have here, the people, the parts and pieces, the Hendrick power, the new Chevy Camaro body – I feel like those are all really good things to put together,” Stenhouse said. “Bringing my crew chief Brian Pattie over, bringing Mike Kelley over, with a lot of knowledge and a lot of experience to work in, they jumped right in. I felt like they’ve been working with these guys for a long time and it’s only been a short amount of time.”

Stenhouse qualified on the pole for the Daytona 500 and finished third in the next race in Vegas. On Thursday night, Stenhouse grabbed his second top five of the season. While the speed is there, it’s still shocking to most.

“I feel like we are definitely capable of running in the top 10,” Stenhouse continued. “I feel like last night was definitely a night that we hit it right. We had a really good car and I hope we can continue to run top five and contend for wins.

“But I definitely feel like we can run top 10 with everything that we have right here. We have to do that – we have to limit my mistakes, limit the issues that we’ve had and just have good, smooth, solid nights, and I think we can run top-ten.”

Stenhouse is right. He’s at his best when he has the confidence in the car. His mistakes are made when he’s pushing too hard to overcome a deficit out of a slower car. He’s an overly aggressive driver anyways, so that mixed with pushing too hard puts him over the limit. When he has a good car, he’s more conservative and it leads to fewer mistakes.

Now, he heads to one of his better tracks at Bristol where he feels like he can get his first victory since Daytona in 2017.

“I told the boys that we needed a good run going into Bristol, my favorite race track, knowing that I really like the way these cars drive. And if it drives as good at Bristol as it has at these other race tracks, I feel like we’re going to have a shot at a win. I wanted a good solid top-15 run, no issues, no mistakes and it turned out to be way better than that. So, we’re looking forward to hopefully carrying that momentum into Sunday.”