Dillon drives No. 3 back to victory lane
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — The No. 3 is No. 1 again at Daytona, on a day, in a race and at a place forever linked with the great Dale Earnhardt.
Austin Dillon won the Daytona 500 on Sunday night driving the iconic No. 3 Chevrolet that Earnhardt piloted for most of his career. Earnhardt was behind the wheel of No. 3 when he won his only Daytona 500 in 1998, and when he was killed in an accident on the final lap of the race three years later.
Dillon’s victory, in the 60th running of “The Great American Race ,” came 17 years to the day of Earnhardt’s fatal crash .
“I don’t know what it is about storylines and Daytona, this place just creates history and I’m proud to be part of it tonight,” Dillon said. “I put the 3 back in victory lane at Daytona.”
Dillon wasn’t a factor in his Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet until the final lap in overtime when he got a push from Darrell “Bubba” Wallace Jr . that helped him get to leader Aric Almirola. Dillon spun Almirola then whizzed on by to give Childress, his grandfather, another iconic victory in the beloved No. 3.
“My grandfather has done everything for me and everybody knows it,” Dillon said. “There’s a lot of pressure on me to perform because I’ve had a little bit of everything. But I like that pressure, the same with the No. 3, there’s a lot of pressure behind it, but I’m willing to take it and go with it.”
As for the aggressive move that wrecked Almirola? Dillon was doing what has to be done to win at Daytona, where he led just once for one lap — the final one.
“I kind of blacked out and everything just kept going,” he said of the final lap. “We just had a run and I stayed on the gas. It’s what it is when you’re at Daytona. I just had more momentum when he was trying to block me and it turned him. Hate that for him, but it’s the Daytona 500. He should do the same thing to me in that position.”
Almirola, in his debut race for Stewart-Haas Racing, was devastated.
“My heart is broken. I thought I was going to win the Daytona 500,” Almirola said. Childress was overjoyed. “To come back 20 years later after Dale’s great victory, and to be able to celebrate 20 years later, with my grandson, it is just a storybook tale,” Childress said. “It’s tough on him running that 3, but we had, I’d say, 97 per cent support from Earnhardt fans who wanted him to run that number.”
The No. 3 was dormant in the Cup Series from Earnhardt’s death until Childress brought it back in 2014 for his grandson.