Austin Dillon loses out to Denny Hamlin on Chase tiebreaker
Austin Dillon came ever so close to advancing to the Round of 8 in the NASCAR Chase for the Sprint Cup playoffs on Sunday at Talladega Superspeedway.
How close?
On the final green-white-checkered overtime finish, all Dillon needed to do was pass one more car before the checkered flag flew and he would have been in. He set his sights on the car directly ahead of him, the No. 43 Richard Petty Motorsports Ford driven by Aric Almirola, but could not make the pass before crossing the finish line.
“You know, it's heartbreaking obviously,” Dillon said afterward. “You need a spot, and it comes down to three one-thousandths (of a second), I think, between us and the 43 car.
“I'm just proud of this team. We made it another full round (in the Chase after advancing out of Round 1). I thought we were going to make it to another one, but it didn't work out for us.”
Dillon finished ninth in Sunday’s race and actually ended up with the same number of points as Denny Hamlin in the Round of 12 of the Chase.
But Hamlin earned the eighth and final transfer spot into the next round by virtue of a tiebreaker, finishing third in Sunday’s event. Hamlin held the tiebreaker edge because his highest finish in the Round of 12 – Sunday’s third – was higher than Dillon’s highest finish of sixth in the round, which he scored a week earlier at Kansas.
“It was really close,” Dillon said. “I guess it wasn’t our day to do it.”
In fact, it came down to a matter of a couple of feet. Had Kurt Busch beat Hamlin to the start-finish line to take third, or Dillon passed Almirola, it would have been a different story. Dillon noted as much on Twitter, but promised that his No. 3 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet team would "be on the gas the rest of the year" in an effort to win his first Sprint Cup race.
Still, Dillon notched his 13th top-10 finish of the season in his No. 3 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet. That and his total of top-four finishes are both career highs.
And he almost pulled off advancement in the playoffs, thanks to engine troubles that eliminated top title contenders Martin Truex Jr. and Brad Keselowski earlier in Sunday’s race. He fell just short.
“We tried. We didn’t really have enough speed all day to do much,” Dillon said. “I’m proud of my guys and all my teammates helped me as much as they could.
“We just couldn’t get another spot. We got a couple there at the end on the last little straight, but the No. 43 (of Almirola) was the car we needed and it didn’t work out.”
Well it wasn't meant to be today. We gave it all we had. The #3Team will be on the gas the rest of the year. The main goal #Win. #GiiC
— Austin Dillon (@austindillon3) October 23, 2016
