Dillon tops Childress teammate in Texas heat

FORT WORTH, Texas — Austin Dillon stayed in front after a restart with two laps to go and beat rookie teammate Tyler Reddick to the checkered flag at Texas on Sunday, giving Richard Childress Racing its first 1-2 NASCAR Cup Series finish in nine years.

With spectators spread out in the Texas Motor Speedway stands on a scorching day, a dehydrated Dillon got the checkered flag and did some celebratory burnouts on the frontstretch before going to the infield care center.

“I got a couple IVS in me, feeling great. I felt great once I got” in air conditioning, Dillon in a postrace conference call. “It stinks to win the race and you’re falling out, but I gave it (my) all.”

Dillon raced to his third career win and first since the 2018 Daytona 500. He and Reddick were in front on the final three restarts, the first after an incident with 29 laps left that shuffled the fast car of Ryan Blaney to a lap back.

“Not bad for a silver spoon kid, huh?” said Dillon, the grandson of Childress. “Tyler Reddick, he raced me clean. This has been coming. We’ve had good cars all year.”

It was the first 1-2 finish for RCR in the series since 2011.

On the final restart, Dillon got a good jump, holding off his rookie teammate and some veterans. Joey Logano finished third, Kyle Busch fourth and series points leader Kevin Harvick fifth.

There were an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 spectators at the track, where the air temperature reached 97 degrees late in the day. Inside the cars, it was 130 to 140 degrees.

The temperature was 30 degrees warmer than it was on March 29, the race’s originally scheduled date before the coronavirus pandemic.