Dillon slows down to talk up stop at NHMS
DEDHAM — The playoffs are under way in NASCAR and coming to New Hampshire Motor Speedway for Sunday’s ISM Connect 300, and Austin Dillon learned the hard way last weekend that mistakes are magnified in the postseason.
A 16th-place finish at Chicagoland represented a missed opportunity for Dillon as he tries to secure a spot in the second stage of the Monster Energy Series playoffs when the number of competitors eligible is cut down from 16 to 12 after the Oct. 1 race in Dover, Del.
Dillon was busted for speeding while entering pit row on Lap 40. He was running sixth when he entered the pits, but the pass-through penalty dropped him back into the pack, and he never recovered.
“I felt like we had a much better car than where we finished,” Dillon said yesterday during a NASCAR media session at Legal C Bar at Legacy Place. “We had that speeding penalty early and just never had any cautions and could not make up for the lack of cautions. It was a mistake, and I talked about minimizing mistakes, and I made one the first stop. Just overlooked something on pit road that ended up really hurting our chances of a really good spot, which we’re still in right now as far as it goes in points situation, but we could have been well inside of the points we’re in right now.”
With the bottom nine of the 16 playoff contenders entering the playoffs separated by just seven points, every mistake has the potential to be costly. The damage could have been much worse as Dillon went from a five-way tie for 11th in points to a two-way share of 12th with Kurt Busch.
Among the final nine drivers in the points standings, only runnerup Chase Elliott, Matt Kenseth (ninth), Jamie McMurray (10th) and Ryan Blaney (11th) fared better than Dillon. Elliott’s finish moved him from a share of 11th to sixth.
“The next two weeks are going to be important to put in solid runs, beat the competitors that we’re racing, and I think some of those stage points will be key,” Dillon said. “If we can sneak a couple stage points in the next two weeks, that will put us in a really good position to make the next round.”
The start of the playoffs was like a continuation of the regular season, everyone looking at the back end of Martin Truex Jr., who overcame a speeding penalty and loose lug nuts early on to post his fifth win of the year.
“They’re doing something different than what we’re doing, obviously, and most of the other competition,” Dillon said of Truex’ team. “It’s been tough to race against them, they’ve just been that much faster at all the places we’ve been going. We’ll just keep fighting to try to figure out what they’re doing. It will be fun trying to see if they can crack under the pressure they’ve got, because they’ve pretty much waxed everybody all year long.”
This visit to Loudon, N.H., marks the final time NASCAR will make a September stop, as the date will head to Las Vegas next season. Loudon will continue to host a July race.
Loudon is a place where Dillon feels comfortable, having raced here as early as May 2008 as an 18-year-old in the East Series. He won a truck series event at NHMS in 2015.
In this year’s July race, Dillon’s seventh at NHMS in NASCAR’s top series, and the other drivers dealt with a traction compound that was added to the track before the race to produce more side-by-side racing in the turns. The compound will be used once again this weekend.
“We missed our setup a little bit going into the race last time,” Dillon said. “So I think we can adjust off of that and get it close to where we were in the middle of the race, which we were going forward pretty good.”