Dillon, Wallace try to rekindle Daytona 500 magic in 2019

DAYTONA BEACH, FLA. — Austin Dillon would fly home from another miserable race last year — say, a 35th-place finish at Talladega or a 37th at Chicagoland — and try and comfort himself with thoughts of when he was feeling sky high.

“Every time you have a bad race, you’re justifying it,” Dillon said. “Well, we won the (Daytona) 500, you know.”

Bubba Wallace was the feel-good story as the rookie driver who flourished at Daytona. He was second behind Dillon for the highest finish ever in the race for a black driver, and threw a family reunion on the dais when his teary-eyed mom and sister crashed the party.

A year later, Richard Petty Motorsports is still a mid-pack team scrambling for sponsorship and battling financial woes that have put the future of the organization and Wallace’s ride on the rocks.

How about a repeat finish at Daytona? Even the 25-year-old Wallace isn’t convinced it’s in the cards.

“A lot of people hyped this story up coming back as, ‘oh, you are going to do it again.’ It’s like, let’s pump the brakes,” Wallace said. “Let’s get through the rest of the week and let’s make it to lap 199.”

Dillon and Wallace finished 1-2 in the kind of finish NASCAR was banking on as the genesis of a breakthrough season for its youth movement. Dillon put the No. 3 car made famous by Dale Earnhardt back in victory lane. He met a kid who gave Dillon a lucky penny that the driver taped to the dashboard. Wallace took a phone call from Hank Aaron and rekindled glory days with Petty. He starred in a docuseries on Facebook Watch and the driver who has tried to build his brand on social media had fans flocking to him for selfies.

They were young, raced with iconic car numbers, and had enough social media savvy that could potentially attract Generation Z to a sport in dire need of a lift.

That 1-2 punch morphed into a seasonlong punch in the gut.