MARTINSVILLE, Va.: Austin Dillon quietly has put together two top-10 finishes in NASCAR Cup Series competition entering Saturday night’s Blue-Emu Maximum Pain Relief 400 at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway, but the eighth race of the season saw the Richard Childress Racing driver contend for his fourth career Cup victory.
Dillon didn’t have the best qualifying effort aboard his No. 3 Get Bioethanol Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 1LE on Friday afternoon, but a well-balanced race car allowed Dillon to steadily climb from his mid-pack starting position to finish Stage 1 in 12th.
In Stage 2, the night only continued to improve for the 32-year-old driver as he methodically continued to pace his way through the field, entering the top-10 early into Stage 2 before collecting four Playoff points by finishing sixth at the end of the 100-lap stage.
A clean pit stop by his Jason Alexander team allowed Dillon to continue his march through Stage 3 where he quickly entered the top-five before putting the pressure on the other competitors for a shot at the lead.
While Dillon was able at times to find himself reeling in the No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet, he saw an opportunity during green flag pit stops to make up the deficit, he needed a caution to have an opportunity to have a fair shot at earning his first Cup Series win of the season.
That opportunity arrived when Todd Gilliland crashed coming out of Turn 4 on Lap 395 which issued just the fourth caution of the race and threw the race into NASCAR overtime for the second consecutive night.
On the overtime restart, Byron brought the field to a slow start which ultimately caused Dillon to spin his tires forcing him to immediately go into defense mode to avoid a hard-charging Kurt Busch.
Joey Logano who restarted on the outside lane was able to swipe the runner-up position away from the 2018 Daytona 500 champion with Dillon finishing third, 0.524-seconds behind Byron.
“I’m a little bummed,” offered Dillon after the race. “I like to pride myself in when we get in those situations being clutch, and that was anything but that on that last restart. I spun the tires pretty good through the gears. Once I got back in line there I had some grip, and I feel like we had good forward drive all night long and I just felt like if we got to the gears we were going to have a shot at him.”
Focused on getting a Cup Series win this season to propel his Welcome, N.C.-based team into the Playoffs, Dillon praised his No. 3 team for their relentless work over the past several weeks which has paid off with their third consecutive top-10 finish on Saturday night.
“Our Get Bioethanol Chevy was really fast,” added Dillon., “We’ve been working our tails off. I’m not going to say we haven’t because we’ve been in a simulator, we’ve been working really hard to make this car as good as possible.
“We want to get RCR a win, and that’s what we’re here racing for. I want to thank the good Lord for bringing us a good run. That was a lot of fun.”
With his finish on Saturday night, Dillon moved to 16th and the final cutoff position in the Cup Playoffs with 18 races remaining in the regular season.
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
