Truck Series Champion in 2011, Xfinity Series Champion in 2013, Coca-Cola 600 winner in 2017, and a Daytona 500 champion in 2018 — 34-year-old Austin Dillon boasts an illustrious resume that can be matched only by a few drivers in NASCAR. Despite these achievements, he doesn’t get recognized as a deserving driver in the Cup Series. The reason for this could be the nature of his wins.
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Dillon has won five races in his Cup Series career, nine in Xfinity, and seven in trucks. Many of these victory lane visits came under lesser-than-ideal situations. His most recent win at Richmond is a shining example. He had to wreck Joey Logano and Denny Hamlin to grab the win and he did. More such incidents pop up when looking at his past.
In 2022, Dillon won a rain-shortened race at Daytona by tapping Austin Cindric on the penultimate lap and putting him at a disadvantage. The victory helped him gain one of the last few spots in the playoffs, in striking similarity to what’s unfolding this season. In 2016, he won an Xfinity race in Fontana after race leader Kyle Busch suffered a tire failure and front-runner Daniel Suarez ran out of gas.
Such narrow victories can’t but help one wonder why the grandson of Childress has a hard time winning races without chaos around him. He answered when the question was put in front of him in Richmond, “I don’t know why God puts me in certain situations to have crazy finishes, but I’m thankful for it. Sorry for all the ones that probably don’t like it, like me. I love you either way.”
Dillon is a man with a target on his back now
Three more races are left in the 2024 Cup Series regular season and four more playoff spots are yet to be filled. The upcoming event will be at the Michigan International Speedway’s high-speed banks. Can Dillon still make a run for the playoffs after the Richmond fiasco? It will be a hard task with the likes of Hamlin and Logano after him for retaliation.
He would have a slim chance of victory in the scenario that he manages to evade those who are out to get him. The track is one of his better ones and he holds multiple top-5 finishes on it. An Xfinity race back in 2018 ended up in the victory lane, so it cannot be ruled out that he flips the script once again and wins on Sunday. But first, he has to keep his car alive.
