Photo Credit: Justin McFarland
At Talladega Superspeedway, Austin Dillon, driver of the No. 3 Dow-Energy&Water/Intellifresh Chevrolet, battled for a top-five finish.
The North Carolina native qualified the car to start the race in second position.
“Well, there was a little bit of everything,” he said. “It started out pretty good, running up front, moving around, chasing guys. Man we had a fast car.”
Then he would get in a wreck when they went four wide with Jamie McMurray. Dillon was able to fight back and with three laps left when the race restarted after a caution, he was in 17th position. The Richard Childress Racing driver was able to gain ground in those final laps and take third position when the race ended.
“Never give up,” he said. “My guys, man. It’s a testament to my guys. They work their butts off. They never panicked today. We’ve panicked a lot this year on certain problems and today was smooth and calm and they handled the situations that they were put through and it was a great race for us
“We pitted 15 times, they said. That’s amazing. The car was killed, and to come home with a third place finish we’ve got to thank the good Lord above.”
As has been the case many times at Dega which is a restrictor plate track, there was quite some wrecks that included cars going airborne in the race.
“I’ve been asked a couple of times already what I think we should do,” he said. “I am not an aero guy. I went flying last year at Daytona International Speedway, and that’s not fun. For guys that haven’t done it, It’s just not a fun thing to be a part of. I don’t know how to fix it personally. I know NASCAR will put their efforts towards fixing it. I know they will. They’ve made the car safer. That’s the reason why we’re walking away from these crashes.
“We’ll get some smart people on it. I have total faith in NASCAR that they’ll do their job and work on that. But, man, wild day. As far as aero-wise, if we need to put something on the back of the car to keep them on the ground, I’m all for it. I’m all for keeping all four tires on the ground. I think as a group, all of us want it to be where we’re not leaving the ground.”
Next up NASCAR will be at Kansas Speedway for the Go Bowling 400 on Saturday May 7th.
