NASCAR driver Austin Dillon ensured playoff fate before Daytona race

• Austin Dillon secured a playoff berth with his win at the Cook Out 400 at Richmond.
• He considers this his most important win, surpassing even his Daytona 500 victory.
• Dillon’s teammate, Kyle Busch, is still fighting for a playoff spot and needs a win at Daytona.

It wasn’t just the broken rib.

Austin Dillon had a cold.

So when it came time to celebrate his Cook Out 400 win at Richmond Raceway last week, he took it easy. “Chill,” he said. He didn’t touch any alcohol for fear of making his symptoms worse, though he admitted he stayed up until the sunrise reminiscing with friends.

“It was an inopportune time for a celebration,” Dillon told the News-Journal before adding the important part. “But there’s no better time for a win.”

Buy our Daytona 500 book

Yes, despite entering Richmond 28th in the point standings, Dillon snatched an automatic playoff berth. The driver of Richard Childress Racing’s iconic No. 3 Chevrolet doesn’t have to worry about the Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona International Speedway. 

Regardless of what happens Saturday, he’s in for the first time since 2022.

Dillon thought that to be the case last year. He won the Richmond event, theoretically sliding into the postseason. But NASCAR reviewed his last-lap bumps of Joey Logano and Denny Hamlin and deemed them dirty.

He kept the win but lost his playoff invitation.

So the 2025 repeat became extra special. Even as a former Daytona 500 champion, Dillon ranks it at the top of his career triumphs.

“Yeah, I would say it’s my No. 1 win, man. I’m not going to lie,” Dillon said. “I think being able to come back after what happened the year before and get that win, there’s nothing more exciting and clutch in my mind than accomplishing what we did.”

He avoided any late drama this season, claiming the checkered flag by 2.5 seconds.

Dillon felt good about his team’s speed in the leadup to Richmond, which joins Daytona as the tracks where he’s made two trips to Victory Lane. Two weeks earlier, he notched his first top-10 finish in three months at Iowa. He followed that with a 15th at Watkins Glen, in which he gained more than 10 positions during the final stage.

Those races arrived after the rib injury, too. He fell off a ladder and onto his bow case in the process of getting it out for hunting season. After Iowa, he went in for an X-ray and learned he cracked the seventh rib on his right side.

He said he should be healed up soon, though. Having a golden ticket in his pocket helps, and the energy at the RCR shop jumped as a result this week.

“Everybody’s fired up,” Dillon said. “They’re ready to go to the playoffs. We want to get (teammate Kyle Busch) into the playoffs this weekend if we can, and we’ll start to go to work at Darlington.”

Busch sits three spots back of a playoff entry before Daytona. Like nearly 20 other drivers, he can only get in via victory.

Expect aggression and chaos and flared tempers and shattered dreams.

As for Dillon, he can just chill.

“To win one of these, you’ve got to make it to the end. So execution is key,” he said of races at Daytona. “But I think this time around, we’ll be looking at it from a different aspect.”