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Bob PockrassNASCAR
Austin Dillon returns to Daytona International Speedway this weekend with great, albeit a little blurred, memories from the most recent time he had raced on the sport’s most famous racetrack.
Of course, stuck a little bit in his mind, too, is the fact he has just one top-10 finish since opening the season with an exhilarating Daytona 500 victory.
Dillon has loved life off the track as a Daytona 500 champion — he has been told by countless Dale Earnhardt Sr. fans that seeing the No. 3 car win the Daytona 500 brought tears to their eyes — but will admit it tapped some of his energy as he has tried to plow through 2018 with the new Chevrolet Camaro and mediocre results.
“The experience has been amazing,” said Dillon, who will race on Saturday at 7 p.m. ET (NBC). “But when you taste Victory Lane, you want to keep going back to it.
“You start off so strong and you feel so good when you leave Daytona and then you get to some of these tracks; when you struggle to get into the top 10 can be frustrating.”
Dillon sits 19th in the Cup standings and his appearances now include fans bringing photos of Victory Lane for him to sign. He wants to watch video of the Richard Childress Racing team sliding on the grass after the Daytona 500 win daily.
And then there’s the fans of Earnhardt he still hears from, fans of the No. 3 car who have stuck with Dillon since Richard Childress allowed his grandson to bring the number to Cup in 2014.
“It solidified them pulling for me,” Dillon said. “It made a lot of the Senior fans happy. You hear a lot of people say, ‘It made me break down in tears.’ It was closure for them.
“It is cool. I just enjoy to see the different fans that really enjoyed that win. The 3 fans are so passionate. They’re really a great fan base and their passion has always pushed me. … They live for Sundays and that 3 car running well.”
Dillon hasn’t run all that well since Daytona. He would rate his season since Daytona as a C-plus. Six finishes outside the top 20 and a total of nine outside the top 15 signify his struggle over 17 races this season. His lone top-10 came with a 10th in March at California.
“We’re passing [grade-wise], but [recently] we’ve been throwing some B’s up there, and the hope is, by the time the [playoffs] start, we start having some A’s, A-minuses and hopefully an A-plus in there,” Dillon said. “At Dover [in May], we were really struggling. Since then, we’ve put an effort into our cars that has really shown me a lot that we can accomplish some speed in our cars.”
Dillon believes there is primarily a handling issue with the new body style of the Camaro that the team has to improve on if it wants to have an impact in the playoffs. The goal come September is to have a sixth- to eighth-place car, because with that, a driver and strategy can carry the team deep into the playoffs.
The team has had its eye on the playoffs since that Daytona 500 victory locked Dillon into the postseason. At Richmond and Dover, the team tried things to specifically prepare for the playoff races.
Dillon has not won a stage, so he is stuck at five playoff points, and he rarely has run in the top 10 at all. He has scored regular-season “stage” points — which come from finishing in the top 10 at the end of a stage — only twice.
A 12th at Pocono and a 14th at Michigan in recent races have boosted Dillon’s confidence, though.
“The first half of the season is a whirlwind kind of because you’re doing stuff each and every day [as Daytona 500 champ] — it’s hard to focus on each track you go to because you’re just so busy,” Dillon said.
“We’ve kind of wrangled it back in [the last few weeks], and I feel like I’ve gotten into a little bit of a rhythm. If you don’t win the Daytona 500, you’re in that rhythm a little quicker. It definitely took until this part of the season until we’re knocking down some finishes.”
So Dillon returns to Daytona looking for more but knowing that the races after Saturday, the ones at the intermediate tracks where handling remains key, likely will determine more about how the rest of his season evolves.
“The impact [of the win] is amazing,” Dillon said. “You know you are in the playoffs. You’re focused on that. We haven’t gained the bonus points we’d like to but we’re confident in the path we’re headed.”