Austin Dillon wins Cup race at Texas
FORT WORTH, Texas – Austin Dillon stayed in front after a restart with two laps to go in the O’Reilly Auto Parts 500 and beat rookie teammate Tyler Reddick to the checkered flag, giving Richard Childress Racing a 1-2 NASCAR Cup Series finish Sunday at Texas Motor Speedway.
It was Dillon’s third career win, his first since Daytona at the start of the 2018 season. He stayed in front on three late 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. 1-2 for RCR. This has been coming. We’ve had good cars all year. I’ve got my baby Ace back home, my wife. I’m just so happy.”
On the final restart, Dillon got a good jump and raced to the checkered flag ahead of his teammate and some veteran drivers.
Joey Logano finished third, with Kyle Busch coming in fourth a day after he finished ahead of the field in two races – having an Xfinity Series victory taken away after his car failed a postrace inspection before winning the Gander RV & Outdoors Truck Series race that night. Cup Series points leader Kevin Harvick finished fifth.
Blaney, who won both stages in the race, finished seventh after leading six times for 150 laps.
There were an estimated 15,00020,000 spectators at the track, where it reached 97 degrees late in the first summertime Cup race at Texas – it was supposed to be a spring race nearly four months ago, before the coronavirus pandemic postponed and then shuffled NASCAR’s schedule. It was much warmer in the cars.