Austin Dillon Tag

By Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service Perhaps there was no better place for Denny Hamlin to finally notch his first win of 2022. Much to the pleasure of the fans at Richmond Raceway, the hometown favorite from Chesterfield, Virginia took the lead of the Toyota Owners 400 from William Byron with five laps remaining and held off the field for a .552-second victory over Kevin Harvick and Byron. It was amazingly Hamlin’s first top 10 of the 2022 season, though it marked his fourth NASCAR Cup Series victory at theRead More

By Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service AUSTIN, Texas – In exactly the kind of thrilling final lap, final-turn high-action finish NASCAR has so often provided on road courses, Ross Chastain persevered in the EchoPark Automotive Grand Prix to win his first career NASCAR Cup Series race at the Circuit of The Americas in Austin, Texas – the sixth different winner this season. Chastain really had to earn this one – coming out on the right end of a frantic, four lead-change, two-lap final overtime. And he did – moving veteranRead More

By Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service LAS VEGAS — Joe Gibbs Racing driver Christopher Bell won his first career NASCAR Cup Series pole position on Saturday and will lead the field in Sunday’s Pennzoil 400 presented by Jiffy Lube (3 p.m. ET, FOX, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). The driver of the No. 20 JGR Toyota bested the 10 cars that advanced to second round qualifying at the 1.5-mile Las Vegas Motor Speedway with a lap of 182.673 mph. Defending race winner Kyle Larson put his No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports ChevroletRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service Reigning NASCAR Cup Series champion Kyle Larson waited until late in Sunday’s Wise Power 400 to flex his muscles. But in the end, the driver of the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet held off a charging Austin Dillon by .195 seconds at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, Calif., to notch his first victory of the season, his second at the 2-mile track and the 17th of his career. In a race that featured 12 cautions for 59 laps, Larson, who started from the rearRead More

By David Morgan, Associate Editor DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – When the green flag flies on Sunday to kick off the 2022 Daytona 500, the NASCAR Cup Series will be venturing into unknown territory. For more than six decades, the sport has been making the pilgrimage to the Daytona high banks to win the sport’s most prestigious race and write themselves into the record book as Daytona 500 champion, but this year it’s a whole new ballgame. With the introduction of the Next Gen car for the 2022 season, drivers and teamsRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service LOS ANGELES — At the end of a transformative NASCAR experience that took the City of Angels by storm, Joey Logano held off hard-charging pole winner Kyle Busch to triumph in Sunday’s Busch Light Clash at the Coliseum. Logano got the lead on Lap 116, moments before Kyle Larson retaliated against Justin Haley for earlier contact that was not of Haley’s doing. Larson steered toward the bottom of the track, knocking Haley’s Chevrolet into the concrete Jersey barrier on the frontstretch. In the competitiveRead More

By Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service Kyle Larson did the heavy-lifting on Sunday, leading nine different times for a race-high 130 laps, ultimately crossing the finish line a hefty 3.619-seconds ahead of the field to earn a NASCAR Cup Series-best ninth win of the season (15th of his career) in the Hollywood Casino 400 at Kansas Speedway. It is the third consecutive race win for the 29-year old Californian and the second time this season he’s won three in a row. The last time a driver won three straight racesRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service DARLINGTON, S.C. – Holding off regular-season champion Kyle Larson throughout a thrilling final green-flag run in Sunday’s Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway, Denny Hamlin is winless in 2021 no more. Hamlin maintained control of his No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota as Larson buried his No. 5 Chevrolet into Turns 3 and 4 on the final lap. Larson gave Hamlin a tap, but Hamlin blocked the top lane and got to the finish line .212 seconds ahead of the runner-up. “He droveRead More

By David Morgan, Associate Editor For the 16 drivers battling it out in the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs, the pressure is already immense. Add in a tough Playoff opener in Sunday’s Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington and that pressure has the tendency to boil over. For Kyle Busch, that came just 10 laps into Stage 2 when contact between him and Austin Dillon in Turn 2 sent Busch’s car for a four-wheel slide into the outside wall, causing heavy damage to his No. 18 Camry. The damage was too muchRead More

By David Morgan, Associate Editor DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. Tyler Reddick came into Saturday night’s Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona as the 16th driver in the NASCAR Cup Series points standings with his Richard Childress Racing teammate Austin Dillon on the outside looking in. After a wild night at the World Center of Racing, Reddick will leave right where he came in, with the final spot in the Cup Series Playoffs after finishing sixth, while Dillon fell just short of unseatingRead More