Dover Notebook
Notebook Items:
- Austin Dillon advances in Chase with peak performance at Dover
- Team Penske Fords advance with solid runs
- 'Best in Class' isn't where Kyle Busch wants to be
October 2, 2016
By Reid Spencer
NASCAR Wire Service
AUSTIN DILLON ADVANCES IN CHASE WITH PEAK PERFORMANCE AT DOVER
DOVER,
Del. – A catastrophe at New Hampshire could have knocked Austin Dillon
out of the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup—if the driver of the No. 3
Richard Childress Racing had
let it.
But
Dillon and crew chief Slugger Labbe came to the elimination race at
Dover International Speedway with a fast car and the perseverance to
score Dillon’s first finish of better
than 20th at The Monster Mile.
In
fact, Dillon ran eighth in the Citizen Soldier 400 at Dover, the second
car one lap down in a race that ended with a 202-lap green-flag run and
Martin Truex Jr. with a 7.527
winning margin. But for Dillon, who had to resort to a backup car a
week earlier after a wreck in practice at New Hampshire, eighth was more
than good enough.
Dillon
advanced to the Chase’s Round of 12 by 11 points over Tony Stewart, who
finished 13th on Sunday. While Stewart’s hopes for a fourth
championship in his final season of
Sprint Cup racing ended at Dover, Dillon grabbed the final berth in the
Round of 12 and will continue in NASCAR’s 10-race playoff.
“We
wrecked a car in practice (at New Hampshire) and we had to use a backup
car, an older car that wasn’t our primary that we wanted to have,”
Dillon said. “We just stayed focused.
And once again God has blessed us. I’m still awestruck, because things
like this just don’t happen.
“I’m
proud to be going on to the final 12 and having race cars that are
capable of moving on. I have three really solid tracks coming up
(Charlotte, Kansas and Talladega), and
I am going to drive the wheels off of it and have fun.”
Dillon didn’t learn his running position in the points until the final laps of the race.
“I
don’t care how many it was, whether it was 12 or 11 or 2 or 1, as long
as we’re in the next round,” he said. “It feels good. It’s time to knock
some more of these guys out,
because we’ve got this opportunity, and I want to say that we’re going
to be the underdog in this next round, so let’s go do it.”
TEAM PENSKE FORDS ADVANCE WITH SOLID RUNS
The
No. 2 Fords of Brad Keselowski and the No. 22 of Joey Logano weren’t
flashy, and they didn’t have the speed to challenge frontrunners Martin
Truex Jr. and Jimmie Johnson
in Sunday’s Citizen Soldier 400 at Dover International Speedway.
But
Keselowski finished fourth and Logano sixth as the Team Penske drivers
advanced comfortably into the Round of 12 of the Chase for the NASCAR
Sprint Cup. And now that all
drivers start the round with 3,000 points after a reset, Keselowski and
Logano are back on equal footing.
“Overall,
we did what we had to do,” Logano said. “The points are back to zero,
and we can head to the next round and try to get a win. Every track is
different. Dover is obviously
a beast of its own. It’s a very cool race track, but everything is so
different compared to where we’re going to go next week to Charlotte and
then Kansas and Talladega.
“They’re
all going be a lot different for sure, but we’ll take what we learned
here for next year, and I’m sure there are some things that we can apply
to the next race, but
most of it is kind of track-specific.”
Last year, after the first points reset, Logano swept the three races in the Round of 12.
“It’s
nice to have the reset,” he said. “We weren’t bad off in points at all,
but to have the reset – we didn’t have the bonus points going into this
round, so it’s nice to be
at zero with everyone and be able to try to get ourselves a win and get
through or have some nice, solid days like we had today to give us some
kind of cushion by the time we get to Talladega.
“We’re ready to go, and now we’ll just wait to see what happens.”
“BEST IN CLASS” ISN’T WHERE KYLE BUSCH WANTS TO BE
Runner-up
Kyle Busch finished a whopping 7.527 seconds behind Martin Truex Jr.,
winner of Sunday’s Citizen Soldier 400 at Dover International Speedway.
Though
the Joe Gibbs Racing organization that fields Busch’s cars gets its
engines from Toyota Racing Development (TRD), as does Truex’s Furniture
Row Racing, and though the
organizations maintain a technical partnership, Truex’s team has
enjoyed an edge in speed of late, winning two of the first three races
in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup.
Don’t think Busch hasn’t noticed.
“I
was just waiting to make my move,” Busch quipped after the race. “I had
him in my sights all day long – nah, I was just kidding. I had nobody
in my sights all day long. I
was in my own area code and he was off in his own zip code. ...
“We’ve
got really fast cars, just missing the boat a little bit on something
the 78 team has figured out. We finished second here just like we did
here last year at this race.
It was a good points day for us, we were able to move on to the next
round, and we can keep being able to do that and just get ourselves to
Homestead. That’s where it matters the most.”
Busch
can make that assertion first-hand. Last year he won the Sprint Cup
championship by winning the season final at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
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