“Believing in the Good” Has Led to Ty Dillon Now Battling for a Million Dollars At the Brickyard 400

Sitting 30th in the Cup standings after Sunday’s race at Dover, Ty Dillon’s playoff hopes are all but gone, unless he wins one of the five remaining regular-season races. But the grandson of Richard Childress still has one chance to turn this into the biggest season of his Cup career.

Dillon will face Ty Gibbs for the $1 million prize in the inaugural NASCAR In-Season Challenge final, to be held next Sunday as part of the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Dillon has had a rough go of it in his Cup tenure. He’s never even come close to qualifying for the Cup playoffs. He has competed for several different team owners and in 266 career starts, hasn’t won a single race, has just two top-fives and eight top-10 finishes.

But at Indianapolis, he has a chance to make NASCAR history. Having been seeded the last of 32 drivers who qualified for the Challenge, Dillon has managed to get through the first four rounds and now faces the biggest race of his career, not to mention the biggest payday. And this has the potential to be one of NASCAR’s best feel-good stories in a long time.

What makes the race at Indy even more compelling is that even if Gibbs finishes 40^th, Dillon needs to finish just one spot higher, even if it’s 39^th, to win that cool million.

Dillon reached the final round of the challenge by finishing 20^th in Sunday’s race at Dover, one spot higher than his semifinal challenger, John Hunter Nemechek. Meanwhile, Gibbs finished fifth in the race, ahead of his semifinal rival Tyler Reddick, who was 12^th.

Dillon proved being an underdog was motivational

Dillon was emotional after Sunday’s race, tears streaming down his face. Even though he finished 20^th, it was like he won the race.

“I didn’t know how it was going to happen. I just kept believing that good things were going to happen, believing in the good,” Dillon said, wiping his eyes. “I had a lot of people text me, they were praying for me. And I just knew that something good was going to happen.

“God has opened up doors in this whole thing to navigate us to where we are. I’ve been able to walk through (his first four challenge opponents) with confidence because this team gives it to me every day and every week.

“Knew something might happen. I knew to never give up and just take opportunity when it opened up. So, I’m just proud of what we got here.”

The Kaulig Racing driver’s secret to get by Nemechek on the final restart of the double-overtime shootout was simple.

“Just being aggressive, finding the holes,” he said. “You never know what’s going to happen. There’s going to be chaos on (the final) restart. So you’ve got to take the opportunity early.”

In a fitting twist of fate at Indy, whether it’s Dillon or Gibbs, the tie is guaranteed to go to Ty.