Austin Dillon held the lead after a two-lap restart and beat rookie teammate Tyler Reddick to the checkered flag in Texas, giving Richard Childress Racing his first NASCAR Cup final 1-2 in nine years.
With viewers spread out in the stands on a scorching Sunday, a heavily dehydrated Dillon received the checkered flag and did some celebratory exhaustions on the front stretch before heading to the infield spotlight.
“I have a pair of IVs on me, I feel great. I felt great once I got into the air conditioning. I wanted to go back because it sucks to win the race and you’re falling, ”Dillon said when she finally spoke of her Zoom call. “But I gave it my all. I left everything out there. At least I can say that, and I left it all on the track. “
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Dillon raced to his third career win and his first since Daytona at the start of the 2018 season. Dillon and Reddick led the way in the last three restarts, the first after an incident with 29 laps remaining that dragged Ryan’s speedy car Blaney back to back.
“Not bad for a silver spoon kid, huh?” Childress’s grandson Dillon said immediately after the race. “Tyler Reddick, ran me clean – 1-2 for RCR. This has been coming. We have had good cars all year. I have my baby Ace at home, my wife. I am very happy.”
It was RCR’s first 1-2 Cup final since Clint Bowyer won at Talladega in 2011 ahead of Jeff Burton.
Childress watched the race from a command center at the team’s racing store in North Carolina.
“I mean, it’s great. … Having Tyler there to work, she has a teammate that she’s really working well with, “Childress said. “And seeing those two guys running for victory, I knew they weren’t going to, I hoped they wouldn’t ruin each other. It was great to see RCR up front. “
On the final restart in Texas, Dillon made a good leap, retaining his rookie partner and some veteran drivers.
Joey Logano finished third, with Kyle Busch fourth a day after finishing up front in two races: his Xfinity Series victory was taken away after his car failed a post-race inspection, and then he won the race for the Trucks series. Series point leader Kevin Harvick, winner of the last three fall races in Texas, was fifth.
“I can’t ask for much more than what we got there,” said Reddick, the Xfinity Series champion in each of the past two seasons. “I just wanted it to be between us. I didn’t want to bring other cars, make sure we could fight. We just received the restarts that gave us opportunities. “
There were an estimated 15,000-20,000 spectators on the track, where it reached 97 degrees late in the first Summer Cup race in Texas; It was supposed to be a spring race almost four months ago, before the coronavirus pandemic was postponed and then changed NASCAR’s schedule. Inside the cars, it was 130-140 degrees.
After leading six times for 150 laps, both highs for the race, Blaney finished seventh.
Blaney, who had given up the lead when he faced lap 287, fell one lap after the field was shuffled when rookie Quin Houff crashed heavily at Turn 4.
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Cole Custer, the Rookie Stewart-Haas Racing driver who came out of a win last weekend in Kentucky, was one of 11 drivers involved in a chain reaction crash on Lap 218 that brought out a red flag. His crumbling No. 41 Ford pulled up near the Pit Road exit.
That collision in the front stretch came around the lap after restarting with most of the cars still stuck together when they exited the fourth corner, when Blaney appeared to be between multiple cars to break free, though he was facing hand-to-hand combat when the cars started crashing.
Track workers brought water to drivers in their cars parked on their track during the red flag that lasted more than 11 minutes.
It was 30 degrees warmer than March 29, when the race had been scheduled before the pandemic. Texas will host a playoff race on October 25.
Before four-time Super Bowl quarterback champion Terry Bradshaw gave an emphatic order to start the engines, he greeted the “beautiful people” in the stands.
It was the first major sporting event in Texas in more than four months to allow spectators, and one of the largest gatherings of any kind in the state during the pandemic. Spectators spread out along the front section, which was completely shaded at the end of the race, and there were also people in about 40 suites.
Speedway Motorsports, which owns Bristol and Texas, is a privately held company like NASCAR, and does not publish official attendance numbers. But there seemed to be around 20,000 fans in Bristol for the All-Star race on Wednesday night, and a similar crowd was expected in Texas, where current regulations would have allowed 50 percent capacity on the track to seat about 135,000. .
“These are the people who wanted to be here. We were never trying to set an attendance record and I told them they were going to turn on the television and say ‘nobody is there,’ “TMS President Eddie Gossage said during the race, without confirming any figures.” The truth is, there’s a pretty good number here. But still, a huge place. “
