Wreck in rearview mirror
For Dillon, full speed ahead after scary crash
Austin Dillon’s protective HANS device feels like his Superman cape.
While America watched in horror as his stock car went tumbling up and down Daytona International Speedway, Dillon had a quick thought: “Hold on!” Seconds later, it was over. And he was good with it. “I try and put it in the back of my head, forget about it and move on,” Dillon said Tuesday of the last-lap crash in the Sunday late-night Coke Zero 400. “You have to be able to move on and trust in the safety equipment. Like I said, ‘If I can take a lick like that and feel as good as I do right now, I feel like I can do anything.’ You feel like Superman.”
And with wings to fly again, Dillon will hop inside his Chevrolet this weekend for the Sprint Cup race at Kentucky Speedway because, well, it’s business. Programmed like most world-class drivers, Dillon won’t carry any demons with him from race to race.
Stuff happens in stock-car racing, particularly in the restrictor-plate speed traps of Daytona and Talladega, where the carburetor plates limit the speed to the 200-mph range but also bunch everybody up to produce the sheet-metal carnage unique to superspeedways. “The Big One,” as they say. Nature of the beast, Dillon says. “You can’t tarnish Daytona,” he told reporters during a national teleconference. “It’s a wild place where you have lots of up and downs and you have to be able to ride them and have a good attitude going into it.’’
The biggest jolt may have been emotionally. Dillon lost contact with his crew and family because the radio cord had ripped.
“I could hear them but they couldn’t hear me,” he said.
But that was only briefly. He emerged from the car thanks to the help of rival crew members, including those from Casey Mears’ team.
“I almost laughed because when he first got to my car, I thought it was Casey Mears,” Dillon said. “I was like, ‘How did Casey Mears get out of his car and get to me that quick?’ Because it felt like six seconds, seven seconds before the first crew had got there.”
And then he popped out of his car and let everyone know he was OK with a wave of both hands. It was an homage to the late bull-rider Lane Frost. Dillon had watched the movie “8 Seconds” with some of the guys from his Xfinity crew Friday night. The next day he won the Xfinity race.
Things didn’t go so swimmingly the following night. The ride wasn’t smooth, but physically Dillon feels fine other than a sore groin and tailbone.
Although Dillon is OK with the inherent danger of his profession, there is quite a bit of discontent in the garage about the state of things involving restrictor-plate racing. Some of the most horrific crashes have involved wrecks at Talladega and Daytona.
Most drivers hate a bunch of variables: the safety issue, the random chaos, destroying cars that cost about $250,000 and the fact a bad wreck can destroy a competitive chance at a season title.
“There isn’t much good to say about what happened here tonight,” Joey Logano, February’s Daytona 500 winner, said after the wreck Sunday night. “It is a product of the racing here. That isn’t the first time that has happened here, and it is just dumb that we allow it to happen more than once.”