What you saw, in the final turn of the Cook Out 400 at Richmond International Raceway Sunday night, was NASCAR at its best, and at its worst, all at once.
It started with Austin Dillon plowing through race leader Joey Logano, then, as Logano spun out of control, and Denny Hamlin, running in third, cut to the inside to steer clear of both Dillon and Logano, briefly taking the lead, Dillon dipped down, clipped Hamlin’s right rear, and sent him spinning.
What you didn’t see, or hear: what Dillon’s spotter was telling him on the team radio as this was going on.
“Coming now! No, no, no, no, no! Bring it now, wreck him! Come on, come on, come on! Wreck him!”
Dillon, 32nd in the points standings going into Sunday, punched his ticket to the NASCAR Playoffs with the win, which is to say, no, absolutely not, NASCAR isn’t going to take the win away from a guy who deliberately wrecked two guys within sight of the finish line; instead, it’s going to give him a pass to the sport’s biggest stage.
“It’s chicken s–t,” said Logano, who finished 19th. “There’s no doubt about it. He is four car lengths back, not even close. Then he wrecks (Hamlin) to go along with it. Then he’s going to go up there and thank God and praise everything with his baby. It’s a bunch of BS. It’s not even freakin’ close.”
Logano was referencing, there, the comments from Dillon after the race, in which Dillon went all-out religion and family and destiny on the win.
“I hate to do that, but sometimes you just got to have it,” Dillon said on NBC moments after getting out of his car. “I’ve got to thank the good lord above. It’s been tough over the last two years, man, and I just, I care about (Richard Childress Racing), these fans, my wife, and this is my first win for my baby girl, so, it means a lot.”
The “tough” past two years includes Dillon finishing 29th in the season standings in 2023, and his steady mediocrity in the 2024 season going into Sunday – he hadn’t led a lap all season until Sunday night.
His career numbers aren’t much better – in 14 seasons, Dillon will be in his sixth playoff round after Sunday’s win, and he’s never finished better than 11th.
Which isn’t doing all that much when you’re driving for RCR, which has 117 wins and six NASCAR Cup Series championships, all in the #3 car that Dillon now drives, when the guy behind the wheel was “The Intimidator,” Dale Earnhardt Sr., who was known for doing whatever it takes to win.
“It’s just the rules of the sport, right?” Dillon said after the race, doing his best to echo Dale Sr. “It is what it is. Wins get you into the next round. I did what I had to do to cross the start-finish line first.”
Hamlin, who had won the spring race at Richmond, his home track, was shockingly understated when he talked with NBC after getting spun out within sight of the checkered flag.
“He’s going to be credited with the win, but obviously he’s just not going to go far,” Hamlin said. “You’ve got to pay your dues back on stuff like that. But it’s worth it, because they jump 20 positions in points, so I understand all that. There’s no ill will there. I get it. I just hate I was a part of it. It would have been fun if I was not one of the two guys that got taken out on the last corner.”
Elton Sawyer, NASCAR’s senior vice president of competition, told reporters after the race that the end of the race will get a second look.
“The last lap was awfully close to the line,” Sawyer said. “We’ll take a look at all the available resources from audio to video, we’ll listen to spotters, crew chiefs and drivers. If anything rises to a level that we think we need to penalize, we’ll do that on Tuesday.”
News flash: NASCAR isn’t going to take the win away from Dillon, from RCR, from Richard Childress, who is Dillon’s grandfather, and who, incidentally, was heard on the team radio after the race telling his grandson, “Pop-Pop is proud of you.”
“It’s racing. They would do it to him, I promise you,” Childress told reporters after the race. “If he would have been leading it, (Logano) would have moved him out of the way. (Hamlin) would have moved him out of the way, either one of them would have done the same thing. I’ve seen it before.”
Sawyer acknowledged that Dillon’s moves involving Logano and Hamlin were “really close to crossing the line,” but at the same time, “historically, that hasn’t been our DNA to take races away.”
“But that’s not to say that going forward this wouldn’t start to set a precedent,” Sawyer said. “We’d have to look at it.”
Logano probably deserves the chance to get the final words in this report.
“He’s a piece of crap. He sucks. He’s sucked his whole career, and now he’s gonna be in the playoffs. Good for him, I guess,” Logano said.
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Chris Graham
