Austin Dillon and Kyle Larson have the same goal: Each driver wants to reach the second round of the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs.
They face divergent paths to get there at Bristol Motor Speedway.
Entering Saturday night’s 500-lap cutoff race at the treacherous short track in East Tennessee, Dillon is on the verge of being one of four drivers eliminated from the initial field of 16 contenders. He is 11 points behind 12th-ranked Austin Cindric of Team Penske in the last provisional transfer spot, but the Richard Childress Racing driver believes he’s within “striking distance” to force the drivers ahead of him into mistakes that help erase the gap.
“If we apply pressure, then we can transfer to the next round, and pressure is running up front and scoring stage points,” Dillon said. “With just a solid day, we can make it happen. But if you win, it also takes care of all this, and we’re going to be aggressive as we can be to put that pressure on.”
Dillon repeated as the winner last month at Virginia’s Richmond Raceway to secure an automatic playoff berth with just one race to spare in the regular season. That was just the sixth victory of his 12 full-time seasons on NASCAR’s top level and the first since a year earlier at Richmond.