MARTINSVILLE, Va. – Austin Dillon proved in Sunday’s STP 500 at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway that you can recover from a poor qualifying effort at NASCAR’s shortest race track.
On Friday afternoon, Dillon, the Richard Childress Racing driver qualified a distant 29th in the No. 3 Dow Chevrolet leaving some to think it was going to be a long weekend for the driver that has made considerable gains this season.
He proved many wrong, myself included.
Throughout Sunday’s STP 500, Dillon exercised patience, but also use the cheerleading from his No. 3 Cup team led by Slugger Labbe to make the most of 500 grueling and tough laps at the 0.526-mile oval.
Leaving his starting position in the dust, Dillon took advantage of track position and long green flag runs to not only dial in his No. 3 Dow Chevrolet, but also put himself in contention for another strong finish.
“To start 29th and to drive up through there like we did is a testament to these guys and effort they put in,” said Dillon. “I struggled at this track qualifying. Seemed to race well, I just have never really been good qualifying or practicing. We did a lot to help me as a driver today. Man, it was just a career day for the Dow Chevy here at Martinsville. Looking forward to races to come. I learned a lot today.”
And even though at times during the STP 500, Dillon found himself on the receiving end of some bumps and bangs from teammate Paul Menard, Dillon chalked it up to hard short track racing after utilizing a late race pit stop to bolt to fourth when the checkered flag flew.
“It was good. Paul just said we had fast race cars,” Dillon added. “That’s pretty much the end of it. I’ve got to learn to keep my mouth shut on the radio. That’s part of racing. I’m a fiery guy and it was fun today. It’s nice to see the front of a short track like that. Sometimes you’ve just got to grow up a little bit, but It’s nice to be running up front. I’ve got to thank Dow and all the people that support us. It’s fun.
I’ll talk to Paul. Me and Paul are fine. That’s the small part of it. What a run. Slugger (Labbe, crew chief) made a great call there. The pit crew did a great recovery. We broke a jack and were able to recover from that. A lot of things happened today. It’s Martinsville. Your head’s hot. You say things you don’t want to mean. Monday morning I’ll talk to everybody and we’ll figure it back out.”
With another exceptional run on Sunday, his second top-five and fourth top-10 of the season, Dillon jumped to seventh in the championship standings just two points from sixth held by Brad Keselowski while just 20 points separate himself from fifth secured by Joey Logano.
For the organization as a whole, it was a good day. With Menard finishing eighth and Ryan Newman 10th, it was the first Cup race where all three Richard Childress Racing cars finished inside the top-10 since the fall race at Kansas Speedway in 2014.
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
