RCR No. 3 driver has two points between himself, second-place Regan Smith
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Ty Dillon is aware of his points situation, but the numbers aren’t the focus for the Sunoco Rookie of the Year candidate, nor his No. 3 Richard Childress Racing team.
“We’re looking at them, but we’re looking at trophies first,” Dillon, 22, said Oct. 4, moments after finishing fifth in the Kansas Lottery 300 NASCAR Nationwide Series race at Kansas Speedway. “We’ve got to get wins.”
Dillon, younger brother of Sprint Cup Series driver Austin Dillon and grandson of team owner Richard Childress, sits third in the series’ standings, trailing JR Motorsports teammates Chase Elliott and Regan Smith.
The Kansas finish allowed Dillon to close the gap on the two somewhat — he now trails Elliott by 40 and Smith by only two points.
The series travels to Charlotte Motor Speedway next, site of Friday night’s Drive For the Cure 300. It’s one of three Nationwide Series races in the final four events of the season that will be contested on 1.5-mile tracks, with stops at Texas Motor Speedway and Homestead-Miami also remaining. The only non 1.5-mile venue is Phoenix International Raceway.
“We’ve been really strong on these mile-and-a-halves the second half of the year,” Dillon said. “Ever since Paul (Menard) kind of kicked it off with a win at Michigan.”
Menard competes full-time for RCR in the Sprint Cup Series; Michigan is a 2-mile track, but it’s the intermediate-track program that Dillon has in mind. Short tracks haven’t been the team’s bread and butter; the bigger circuits fall more into its wheelhouse.
Dillon scored his first Nationwide Series win earlier this year at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, a week after finishing fifth at Chicago. He was ninth at Atlanta, seventh on a return trip to Chicago and third a week later in Kentucky, all — except for Indy — 1.5-mile stops.
In 2012 and 2013, he competed in NASCAR’s Camping World Truck Series, scoring three wins and finishing fourth and second in the points standings. He and crew chief Danny Stockman Jr. know what is required to run competitively, and what it takes to win.
His team hasn’t gotten “complacent” since moving up to the Nationwide Series, he said.
“I think in the past we would come to the track, win a race and maybe get complacent with our cars,” Dillon said. “The guys have just kept their heads down and kept digging and digging. We’re getting faster and faster each week.
“We’ve got some work to do on the short tracks, for sure, but we’ve got some mile and a halves left to go and we’ve got a lot of confidence going into (them).”
All three of Dillon’s poles this season have come on 1.5-mile tracks — he scored his first at Las Vegas in the series’ third race of the season, added another at Kentucky and the most recent last week at Kansas.
“Getting the pole … was a huge boost and running the way we did, having a car that was capable of me making mistakes and still coming back through the field was a nice relief,” he said.
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