By Toby Christie, NASCAR Editor
What has been rumored for weeks, is now confirmed to be true. Ty Dillon will pilot the No. 14 Chevrolet in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Atlanta Motor Speedway this weekend. Stewart-Haas Racing made the announcement via Twitter Tuesday afternoon.
CONFIRMED: @tydillon in No. 14 @amsupdates & @BrianLVickers in No. 14 @LVMotorSpeedway. Future races remain TBD.
— Stewart-Haas Racing (@StewartHaasRcng) February 23, 2016
After Atlanta, Brian Vickers will slip back behind the wheel for the next race at Las Vegas. Reports of any arrangements past the third race of the season are unofficial at this point.
Dillon was asked at Daytona 500 Media Day about reports that he had been asked to drive the No. 14 Chevrolet in upcoming races, and he acknowledged that there had been contact but that nothing was set in stone at that time.
A headline was caught on Stewart-Haas’ website early Tuesday, and that headline claimed that Dillon would drive the car in Atlanta. Now we know for sure that the headline was indeed correct.
Dillon is the younger brother of NASCAR Sprint Cup Series regular, Austin Dillon, and he is the grandson of championship winning car owner Richard Childress.
In eight previous Sprint Cup Series starts, Dillon’s best finish was a 14th-place effort last season at Michigan. Dillon has also won at Indianapolis in the XFINITY Series, and he’s a three-time race winner in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series.
Dillon and Vickers are of course filling in for Tony Stewart as he recovers from a burst fracture of his L1 vertebra suffered just before the start of the season.
Image: Patrick Smith/Getty Images
