SONOMA, Calif. — Based on his performance in three qualifying races, the chances of Ty Dillon making a deep run in the inaugural In-Season Challenge were slim.
All he needed was an opportunity.
After entering the tournament as the final seed — No. 32 of 32 — Dillon and his No. 10 Kaulig Racing team kept the Cinderella story alive Sunday at Sonoma Raceway, using a late bump-and-run in Turn 11 to shift this week’s opponent — Hendrick Motorsports’ No. 8 seed Alex Bowman — out of the way on the final lap to advance to the semifinal round of the tournament.
MORE: In-Season Challenge after Sonoma | Sonoma results
“I’m a little in shock,” Dillon said.
He and everyone else who made a bracket.
Dillon trailed Bowman much of the day, but with Bowman in his sights in the final 15 laps, Dillon knew he had a chance to pounce if he could get there.
“I was like, ‘OK, we have the opportunity here. Just execute some good restarts,’ ” Dillon said. “And I did. I got by him on the last restart, and he battled back. I know he was (champing) at the bit, too. He passed me clean — we all got checked up at (Turn) 11; he got around me on the outside. And my goal on the last lap was just try to be close enough getting into 11 where I could move him off the bottom and try to drag race him back.”
Move him he did, sliding Bowman out of the groove and allowing Dillon to jolt by on his right, rocketing Dillon to a 17th-place finish and dropping Bowman to 19th. All he needed to do was beat him by one to advance.
“If it wasn’t for a million dollars, I probably would have never punted him for that position,” Dillon said. “But a million dollars means a lot.”
Dillon has had perfectly improbable — or improbably perfect — performances when it has mattered most. In the opening two weeks of the five-week, bracket-style challenge, Dillon was tasked with beating a 57-time Cup Series winner and top seed Denny Hamlin at EchoPark Speedway (formerly Atlanta Motor Speedway) before getting paired against 2012 Cup champion Brad Keselowski in Chicago.
At EchoPark, Hamlin was one of more than 20 drivers involved in a massive pileup at Lap 70 and was eliminated from competition while Dillon charged to an eighth-place finish. Fate played into Dillon’s hands early at Chicago, too, when Keselowski was collected in a Lap 3 traffic jam that ousted his No. 6 Ford from the race while Dillon used a 20th-place run to advance.
Dillon earned his way to the semifinals Sunday. Faced with elimination in the final hairpin corner of the race, Dillon took matters into his own hands without wrecking Bowman, but moved the Hendrick Motorsports driver out of the way to join John Hunter Nemechek, Tyler Reddick and Ty Gibbs in the penultimate round.
“This in-season tournament, to some, might not mean a lot, but you see what it’s done for our team and myself,” Dillon said. “We’re excited to be a part of it and down to the final four. It’s been just a dream run. It’s hard to even put it together. I’m a little bit shook by how it all shook out, but yeah. We did it.”
Dillon said he and Bowman spoke after the race and shared a laugh about the contact with both understanding the circumstances and no lingering frustration over a bump-and-run for 18th place.
“I told him, I’m like, ‘Hey, man, I’m sorry,’ ” Dillon said. “If it wasn’t for a million dollars, I would have never done that. I appreciated him for racing me clean, and he was cool. He knew it was coming. I think he was more frustrated with my teammate (AJ Allmendinger), my brother (Austin Dillon). They were all racing hard back there, and he did a great job.”
The tournament now shifts to Dover Motor Speedway on Sunday (2 p.m. ET, TNT Sports/truTV, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio), where Dillon will face off against No. 12 seed John Hunter Nemechek, who advanced over his Legacy Motor Club teammate Erik Jones at Sonoma. Dillon is carrying more than just some head-to-head wins with him into the 1-mile oval. He and the No. 10 team have rattled off three consecutive top-20 finishes for the first time this season.
All Dillon needs at Dover is a chance.
“We don’t give up when things are against us, and we scored a bunch of points today too,” added Dillon, who scored 29 points at Sonoma. “For whatever reason, this has brought our team alive in a good way, and we just want to keep this momentum going forward for the rest of the year.”
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