TALLADEGA – Alabama native Grant Enfinger said his first race at Talladega Superspeedway a year ago was a huge learning experience for the ARCA driver.

He now comes back a year older and wiser and is excited to be racing again in his home state. Enfinger was fourth fastest in practice in the No. 09 BeasleyAllen.com-Stanley Industries Ford on Thursday.

“We’re better than we’ve ever been at a track like this,” he said after practice on Thursday. “We found some stuff this year at Daytona. We transferred it to the test here a few weeks ago. It seems to be doing all right for us.”

Enfinger said he learned “pretty much everything” at the race last year where he finished third.

“I didn’t know what to expect in the draft,” he said. “I was kind of afraid to use the breaks at the beginning, so I’d get a run on somebody and I’d just go to their outside and end up back in 20th or 30th.

“I learned that you can actually use your break pedal a little bit just to stay in line. Last year we struggled with being able to suck up to cars. We worked on that a little bit at the test, at Daytona and again here. I feel like we’re going to be better pulling up to somebody, so that’s kind of a common problem with these cars, but I think we’re going to be better as far as that goes.”

Today’s ARCA 250 at Talladega Superspeedway will be the third race of the season for Enfinger. He finished third at Texas last weekend.

“Daytona we ended up falling out early because of mechanical failure and last week at Texas we had a shot to win it, ended up finishing third,” Enfinger said. “We’ve been running up front everywhere we went last year. Hopefully we can continue the trend.”

When it comes to drafting at Talladega, Enfinger said choosing a draft partner isn’t quite as simple as it sounds.

“I’d rather stick with the Ford guys,” he said. “You’ve got to go with whoever your car’s going to work with. We had a few issues with the car sucking up last year and we only worked well with two other cars pretty much. We got stuck at the end behind a Chevy. I’d get good run on him and about half a car length back from him, it’d be like hitting a wall. You’ve got to find a guy you can actually hit and you can push your way to the front. We’ll find out (this) morning when we do our drafting session who we can work with and who we can’t.”

Enfinger posted a speed of 185.237 mph during qualifying on Thursday. He’ll start today’s ARCA 250 from the eighth position.

The ARCA 250 begins at 4 p.m. from Talladega Superspeedway.