Dillon pours it on late to win title
Driver earns first Cup victory with dramatic finish at rain-delayed Coca-Cola 600.
CONCORD, N.C. — Austin Dillon drove a long road to get his first NASCAR Cup victory. And then he ran out of gas.
All good. Dillon, competing in his 133rd Cup race, took advantage of Jimmie Johnson’s misfortune to win the Coca-Cola 600 in the wee hours of Monday morning.
Johnson ran out of gas, too. But his misery came with two laps to go, allowing Dillon to slide his No. 3 Chevrolet into the lead and hold off Kyle Busch and Martin Truex Jr. for the victory.
Barely. He ran out of gas after taking the checkered flag and leading his one and only lap of 400.
“I can’t believe it,” Dillon said. “I just stay focused on the last laps. … We’re in the Chase, baby! It’s awesome!”
Truex had the most dominant car of the night, leading 233 laps, but could not catch Dillon.
“I drove my butt off but it wasn’t to be tonight,” Truex said.
It was a performance reminiscent of last year when Truex led 392 of 400 laps, setting a record for miles led in a NASCAR Cup race and shattering any competitive aspirations of everyone dragging along for the ride in his rear-view mirror. It almost worked again. “I felt we were going to catch them,” Truex said of Dillon and Johnson.
“If the car had not been too loose, I think we would have got there with two laps to go.”
The race began with fire followed by rain at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
The immediate losers of the first deal were Brad Keselowski and Chase Elliott.
They were joined by everyone else shortly after their incident. NASCAR officials shut down the race on Lap 143 because of lightning in the area. The red flag came out and cars were pulled off the track and covered.
The caution came out at 7:53 p.m. (EDT) just after the caution f lag precipitated by Matt DiBenedetto’s car, which hit a wall. Fans were told to clear the grandstands for safety reasons.
NASCAR’s longest race of the season became even longer and ran well past midnight. Elliott and Keselowski, two of the top prerace contenders, called it an early night. A freaky accident on Lap 19 took them out of the race after Jeffrey Earnhardt car’s had mechanical issues and started dropping oil on the track.
As things went haywire. Keselowski’s car smashed into the rear of the No. 24 car driven by Elliott.
“Somebody broke and there was just oil everywhere and I couldn’t turn,” Keselowski said. “I ran into the back of Chase. Somebody broke in front of him and then he ran over what they broke and then he broke, so there were two cars broke in front of me and just oil everywhere. You couldn’t stop and turn. You couldn’t do anything. It’s a real bummer for our team.” Ditto for Elliott. “Yeah, I saw parts and pieces flying,” Elliott said. “I don’t know if he blew a tire or something and I ended up hitting something that he had on the track. I hit it pretty hard. It was really solid, so I knew it was rough. I saw some fire, tried to get stopped and get out of the way and I guess Brad got in my oil and couldn’t get slowed down, so I hate it. Man, it is so just ridiculous.”
At least Busch was still up and running. He was trying to become the eighth driver to sweep the Charlotte races.
“It would certainly mean a lot,” he said on Thursday. “That’s what we come to the race track to do is to try to win each and every weekend. But it’s been a long, long time since I won at Charlotte, which was never in a Cup car, so finally we got that out of the way, and now we look forward to hopefully being able to make it back to back. We’ll see how it goes.”
Busch did manage to win the first 100-lap segment of the Coca-Cola 600 and wound up second overall. Truex took the second segment and Denny Hamlin won the third.