Last year, on the final lap at Daytona, Austin Dillon saw his NASCAR playoff hopes end when he was involved in a massive crash on the final lap in Turn 3. Dillon’s fortunes were reversed on Sunday, as he lost the carnage, won the race and made the NASCAR playoffs in thrilling fashion.
After moving from 16th to first by avoiding a massive crash in Turn 1 with 23 laps to go, Dillon had to wait out a lengthy rain delay before taking the win in the Coke Zero Sugar 400. With three laps to go, he put the bumper on race leader Austin Cindric in Turn One, taking the lead and then taking the checkered flag with a push from Richard Childress Racing teammate Tyler Reddick.
Dillon’s win is his first of the 2022 season, fourth of his career and second at Daytona. But more importantly: Dillon’s win puts him in the NASCAR playoffs, giving him a chance to compete for the championship while going head-to-head with Martin Truex Jr. below the cutoff line and out of playoff contention.
After the checkered flag, Dillon attributed the win to “crazy faith” — especially the faith of his wife Whitney.
“She was dancing in the rain – I got upset with her, I said ‘Don’t do that!'” She said, ‘God, when you have faith like I do, you don’t have to worry about it.’ I was like, ‘OK, OK, I got you, kid,'” Dillon told NBC Sports. “(Boy) Ace was back there with me — we were watching Paw Patrol, watching the Carolina Cowboys win the PBR event — and they said ‘hey go get ready’. So we stood ready.”
Dillon also noted how big the help was from Reddick.
“I have to thank my teammate Tyler Reddick…Man, we’re in the playoffs!” he said.
Unofficial Coke Zero Sugar 400 Results
- #3 – Austin Dillon
- #8 – Tyler Reddick
- #2 – Austin Cindric
- #77 – Landon Cassill
- #62 – Noah Gragson
- #51 – Cody Ware
- #78 – BJ McLeod
- #19 – Martin Truex Jr.
- #15 – David Ragan
- #18 – Kyle Busch
The big one
After heavy rain forced the race to be postponed from Saturday night, a 10 a.m. Sunday morning start gave NASCAR a window to try to complete all 400 miles before any rain hit the beach of Daytona. But as the second half of the race progressed, it became increasingly clear that the field was trying to outrun the weather as much as they were trying to outrun each other.
Then the heavens opened in Turn 1 with 23 laps to go. The entire lead pack slid helplessly into each other and into the wall, eliminating nearly all the drivers as Dillon and a few other select cars slipped.
After getting out of their cars, some of the drivers involved in the crash were angry at NASCAR for not throwing caution earlier. Denny Hamlin said that “better official“Could have prevented the accident. Justin Haley called the situation”unacceptable“and “ridiculous,” claiming NASCAR had an entire lap to call a rain caution. Daniel Suarez express similar feelings suggesting that NASCAR should have run a caution before the rain hit Turn 1 and the crash occurred.
Speaking in the NBC broadcast booth, NASCAR senior vice president of competition Scott Miller explained that race control had all the information it needed to judge whether the track was still dry or not. Shortly before the crash, the pace car had reported that it was still dry, leading to Miller citing the rain as unexpected that officials could not have acted against.
“We really couldn’t do anything about it. It’s not something you can predict, when it’s going to start raining,” Miller told NBC Sports. “So a super bad situation for everyone.”
After the crash, a nearly three-and-a-half-hour red flag appeared before the rain stopped and NASCAR was able to dry out the racetrack, setting up a 16-lap run to the finish.
The bubble bursts
Thanks to Kurt Busch’s withdrawal from the playoffs due to injury, two playoff spots became available for Ryan Blaney and Martin Truex Jr. in the regular season finale. as long as there were no new winners. However, not only was there a new winner, but the battle for the final playoff spot in points turned into a nail-biter all the way to the checkered flag.
With five laps to go in Stage 1, a multi-car crash in Turn 2 collected Blaney, sending him into the outside wall and causing him to suffer severe damage to his right front fender. Blaney’s team was able to keep his car moving, but his badly damaged vehicle was uncompetitive and limped through laps throughout the rest of the race.
That put Martin Truex Jr. in prime position to overtake Blaney in the points as he scored 15 points in the stage. But Truex suffered major right-front fender damage in a separate crash on the backstretch, affecting how his car performed in the draft for the rest of the race.
If the race had been called official during the rain delay, Blaney would have been eliminated from the playoffs. But when the race resumed, Blaney was able to gain multiple positions on the track, passing drivers who had dropped out of the race due to crash damage. Meanwhile, Truex lost the lead draft and ended up losing positions, dropping to the back of the lead pack and finishing eighth. With Dillon winning the race, Blaney earned the final playoff spot by three points over Martin Truex Jr. with a 15th-place finish, eliminating the 2017 Cup Series champion from title contention.
“We’re very fortunate, that’s for sure,” Blaney told NBC Sports. “It wasn’t a good day to start, to get ripped early. And at that point, our fate was out of our hands. All we could do was try to keep working at it and fix it where luckily we were able to get enough cars through the wreckage that we kept moving up and were able to get in.
Of Truex, he said his car “wasn’t fast enough” at the end.
“Just not fast enough to keep up with those guys,” Truex told NBC Sports. “We got the restart we needed and got into a good spot there, we just couldn’t get going. I was wide open the whole last run there. It’s a shame. It’s windy. Just too much damage to have enough speed to do what we had to do… We gave up a lot of points all season long. That’s what it is.”
Summary of race results
- Cindric wasn’t exactly thrilled with Austin Dillon putting his bumper on him, as it cost Cindric a chance to win the Daytona 500 and Coke Zero Sugar 400 in the same season. Had he done so, he would have made him the first driver to sweep the season at Daytona since Jimmie Johnson in 2013.
- The level of the wreck gave some drivers unlikely wins and opportunities for career days: Landon Cassill tied his career-best fourth-place finish, his first such finish since 2014. Cody Ware claimed for the win on the final lap and finished sixth, the best finish of his career and his first top-15 finish. BJ McLeod finished a career-best seventh, improving on ninth in the same race a year ago.
- Top 10 statistical wonder: David Ragan’s ninth-place finish was the first such result in his entire Cup career. That means he has now finished in every possible position in a Cup race — from first to 40th — at least once.
- Only 10 drivers finished on the first lap, the fewest of any Daytona race since the 2018 Daytona 500 — which also saw Austin Dillon win and 10 cars finish on the first lap. Only 17 cars were left to run at the end, the fewest of any speedway race since only 14 cars were left to run at Talladega in the fall of 2017.
Next race
The NASCAR Cup Series playoffs begin with one of the sport’s oldest traditions and one of its jewel races: The Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway, next Sunday at 6:00 PM ET on the USA Network.
