Yahoo Autos Austin Dillon Wins Resumed Daytona Race, Makes NASCAR Playoffs
Hours ago, today's NASCAR Cup Series regular season finale at Daytona looked like it would end with Austin Dillon slipping through a field-destroying wreck caused by sudden rain. When the race resumed with just ten cars on the lead lap, and even fewer competitive and healthy cars, Austin Dillon took victory in a very different way.
With Kyle Busch, Tyler Reddick, and Martin Truex Jr. in badly damaged cars and just about everyone else on the lead lap in an uncompetitive car, the race effectively came down to a duel between Dillon and Daytona 500 winner Austin Cindric. The group quickly broke off into a pod of 4, the style of racing this car seems to develop at pack racing tracks when there are not enough cars to overcome the aerodynamic advantage of the small groups. Cindric led Dillon, Landon Cassill, and Martin Truex Jr. initially, but an aggressive two-car move by Dillon's teammate Tyler Reddick got Reddick and Noah Gragson into the pod while pushing Cassill and Truex out.
That group ran in line for quite some time, but Dillon eventually bumped the leading Cindric in a corner. While it was not the egregious intentional wreck that won Dillon the Daytona 500 here years ago, the move was enough to unsettle Cindric and break up the pod. That left a chaotic shuffle over the last three laps, but Dillon had teammate Tyler Reddick behind with a heavy team incentive for Dillon to be the winning driver. Reddick blocked the field while Dillon led comfortably, enough for Dillon to take the win and make the NASCAR playoffs in his last chance this season.
While it may be lost in the chaos of the day, the move Dillon put on Cindric should be a point of controversy. It was Dillon's second time using direct contact to win a race at Daytona, a place where the risk of crashing a competitor at 200 MPH was once considered a major safety risk in stark contrast to the much lower-speed intentional contact drivers are accustomed to at short tracks. This move was certainly less odious, but it remains questionable. However, these are the sort of decisions NASCAR's current win-and-make-the-playoff-field ruleset combining with a regular season finale on a pack racing track are designed to encourage.
Cindric, for his part, saw it coming. As he told NBC, "I totally expected to get drove through, it was just a matter of time."
With Dillon winning, only one of previous point-in contenders Martin Truex Jr. and Ryan Blaney would make the field of 16. Blaney crashed out early, putting Truex on a line with a damaged car where he had to finish in the top half of the ten-car remaining field to qualify. When he was pushed out of the lead pack late, he fell far behind. Blaney will make the field and Truex will not.
The NASCAR playoffs start with a three-race round of 16, eliminating four drivers. Dillon and Blaney are joined in the 16-car field by Chase Elliott, Kyle Larson, Alex Bowman, William Byron, Kyle Busch, Denny Hamlin, Christopher Bell, Austin Cindric, Joey Logano, Chase Briscoe, Kevin Harvick, Ross Chastain, Daniel Suarez, and Tyler Reddick. Kurt Busch, who has a race win this season but has been out of the car since an injury suffered at Pocono last month, will not be a part of the playoff field when the series begins the round at Darlington next weekend.
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