For the second year in a row, Austin Dillon has claimed a victory in the Cook Out 400 at Richmond Raceway. This time around, though, it’ll count for Playoff eligibility. Dillon, the driver of the No. 3 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet, led 107 laps on his path to a race win in Saturday night’s high-tire wear slugfest at the 0.750-mile short track in Virginia.
With the win, the sixth of Dillon’s NASCAR Cup Series career, the driver erased what had been a subpar season prior to Saturday night’s event at Richmond as he held off Hendrick Motorsports’ Alex Bowman by 2.471 seconds to score the all-important win.
Race Results
Dillon was proud to pick up the victory without a cloud of controversy surrounding victory lane.
“Man, that feels good. I gotta thank the good Lord above. You know, I really wanted that one. Last year hurt really bad, just going through the whole process of it. But this one feels so sweet,” Dillon stated in his post-race interview on USA Network. “And man, I love Richmond. Our Winchester/Bass Pro Shops Chevrolet was really good.”
After climbing from the car, Dillon revealed that he’s been racing injured over the last couple of weeks.
“I was thrown out a lot this week. Didn’t feel great, I’m actually racing with a broken rib right now, for the last two weeks,” Dillon admitted. “And man, that was awesome.”
A broken rib was no match for Dillon’s mastery of the 0.750-mile Richmond Raceway. Neither were the other 37 drivers in Saturday’s field.
Alex Bowman, who now finds himself as the final driver on the Playoff grid by virtue of Dillon’s unexpected win, was frustrated by how he was driven by lapped traffic in the closing laps as he was unable to track down Dillon for the race win.
“A couple favors,” Bowman quipped when asked what he needed to pull off the win over Dillon. “I sure complained about it on the radio, but that’s just part of what we do, so… Vented a little bit, but had a really good ally 48 in the last run. Just broke the tires off too much in lap traffic. Didn’t get any breaks. That made me kind of work the rears harder than I need to. Just need to be a little better through there to get to him. I certainly think we had the better car. Unfortunately didn’t get there.”
Bowman will now have to spend the next week dreading a date with Daytona International Speedway where anything can happen, and seemingly anyone can potentially win. If a driver outside of the Playoff cutline wins next weekend, Bowman will be eliminated from the Playoffs — provided he doesn’t work past Tyler Reddick in the point standings.
“Yeah, certainly really stressful on a lot of fronts,” Bowman explained. “I mean, I think with the way that race normally goes, it’s about a must-win at that point because I think you’re most likely going to have a new winner. Yeah, just need to go execute and try to win the race. That’s all we can really do.”
Team Penske teammates Ryan Blaney, Joey Logano, and Austin Cindric logged top-five finishes on Saturday night behind Dillon and Bowman.
For Logano, his march to a fourth-place finish was ultra impressive as he rebounded from starting at the rear after suffering a cut tire, which led to a crash in Turn 4 during Friday afternoon’s practice session.
Kyle Larson was all smiles about nabbing a sixth-place finish on a night where he says he fully expected to finish off of the lead lap, and he was followed inside the top-10 by Daniel Suarez, Josh Berry, Brad Keselowski, and Denny Hamlin, who bounced back from several pit road miscues to finish 10th.
Tyler Reddick took the Stage 1 win, but finished the race in 34th after he was spun by Ty Gibbs after Gibbs was nudged into him by Daniel Suarez on Lap 181.
Bubba Wallace, Reddick’s 23XI Racing teammate, took the Stage 2 win and turned the Xfinity Fastest Lap of the race, but was done in by a detached wheel on pit road late in the race. Wallace would wind up finishing a disappointing 28th, but he showed speed all race long.
There was a big crash at Lap 198 of Saturday night’s race, which ended the night for Justin Haley and the sport’s Most Popular Driver, Chase Elliott.
Elliott, who was attempting to skirt past the carnage, got tagged in the right rear by Kyle Busch, who was involved in the crash. This sent Elliott hard into the outside wall and ended his race.
William Byron came into the race as the regular-season championship leader, and with a 12th-place finish and Elliott’s first DNF of the season, Byron extended his point lead to 68 points. With just one race left in the regular season, that margin was enough to secure Byron the regular-season championship a week early. He’ll gain the 15 Playoff Points that come along with the regular-season crown.
“Feels really good,” Byron said of collecting the regular-season championship. “This team has worked extremely hard. All the guys have worked hard through the summer months. Feel like this has been the best summer we’ve ever had speed-wise. Had a lot of tough things happen throughout probably really early July. We had a lot of speed, but some crashes in practice and qualifying. Just some car issues and things that happened. But yeah, just really, really cool. Looking forward to the Playoffs.”
Next up for the NASCAR Cup Series is the Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona International Speedway on Saturday, August 23. That race will be televised on NBC, and coverage of the race is set to kick off at 7:30 PM ET. The Motor Racing Network (MRN) and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio will provide the radio broadcast of the race.
