DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — The NASCAR Cup Series regular season will come to a close with Saturday’s (Aug. 23) Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona International Speedway, and two dozen drivers likely had sleepless Friday nights as their championship hopes hang in the balance.
One of the drivers resting easy this time around? Austin Dillon.
After being stripped of his playoff eligibility following a controversial win at Richmond Raceway in 2024, Dillon redeemed himself with a clean and dominant Richmond win last Saturday to clinch his first playoff berth in three years.
“It’s pretty exciting, just getting to enjoy it and come into (Daytona) knowing we get to go run in the playoffs,” Dillon said.
Dillon’s win has flipped the script on what was shaping up to be another miserable year for Richard Childress Racing.
Now the team has one car locked into the playoffs and RCR can shift all its attention turns toward bringing Kyle Busch and the No. 8 team back to victory lane at Daytona.
How would Busch, who’s riding a career-worst 82-race winless drought, celebrate such a win?
“(With) plenty of Rebel Bourbon, that’s for damn sure,” Busch said. “I might be worse than Brad Keselowski after a championship.”
But for all the success that Busch has experienced in his storied Cup career, Daytona has become his biggest nuisance.
The Daytona 500 is the one box he’s failed to check and he’s riding a 17-year winless drought at Daytona in Cup despite multiple close calls.
“It’s frustrating for sure, having so many times that we’ve been close and not being able to get the job done,” Busch said. “That makes it frustrating, but it gives you a sense of optimism as well too, knowing that you’ve been so close and you can probably be close again. You just need to put yourself in the circumstance that gets you to victory lane first.”
Busch almost snapped his Daytona drought one year ago. But it was one final block that he failed to make on the backstretch while leading, and it cost him the win.
“There’s moments like that where you can go back and rethink it 1,000 different ways, but that one seemed pretty simple that I just missed,” Busch said.
But that race is in the rearview mirror, and the difference between last year and this year is that Busch has a playoff-bound teammate in Dillon to help guide him to the promise land on Saturday night.
“I think it was this year for the 500, (Dillon) was like, ‘you know the last guy who had won on their 20th (Daytona 500) start? I’m pushing you; I’m pushing you all the way there,'” Busch recalled. “So Austin’s definitely a company guy and all for trying to get me my 500 trophy, but also this weekend to get us into the playoffs.”
“It’s a game changer for RCR if we get two cars in the playoffs,” Dillon said. “It just flips the whole momentum of where we’re at as a company. So yeah, I’ll be helping all I can, and my little brother’s (Ty Dillon) out there too trying to help him some.”
The assists that Dillon can provide for Busch during Saturday’s 400-miler will go well beyond pushing.
“I think (it’s) the trustworthiness,” Dillon said. “If I can be there for him to know that I’m probably not going to pull out (of line) at the inopportune time, it gives him a feeling of comfort and a buffer there to be a little freer of the moves that he makes. And then in the fuel mileage side of it, maybe I’m the one taking the brunt of carrying, burning the fuel, if it comes down to something like that; burning the fuel where he can save behind me.”
Make no mistake: Dillon wants another Daytona triumph to add to his trophy case.
He already has two Cup wins at The World Center of Racing, and he would enjoy some elite company with a third. But if it’s the No. 3 car and the No. 8 car at the front of the field in closing laps on Saturday, he knows that it’s RCR first and Austin Dillon second.
“Daytona is so special to win at, and I’d be remiss to say that I want it for my guys if we have a shot this weekend,” Dillon said. “But I know if the No. 8’s there, that’s our main focus: trying to get another RCR car in (the playoffs).”
Stephen Stumpf is the NASCAR Content Director for Frontstretch and is a three-year veteran of the site. His weekly column is “Stat Sheet,” and he formerly wrote "4 Burning Questions" for three years. He also writes commentaries, contributes to podcasts, edits articles and is frequently at the track for on-site coverage.
Find Stephen on Twitter @stephen_stumpf