Austin Dillon Races Well at Daytona Exhibition

Austin Dillon got off to a great start this year, earning a 5th place finish at the Advance Auto Parts Clash at Daytona International Speedway, an exhibition race used as a primer for the legendary Daytona 500. According to NASCAR.com, the exclusive field for the race is limited to “drivers who were 2017 pole winners, former Clash race winners, former Daytona 500 pole winners who competed full-time in 2017 and drivers who qualified for the 2017 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs.”

Austin Dillon won his first-career Cup Series race last season, making him eligible for the 2018 Clash. Austin talked about his performance in the exhibition saying:

“That is the fastest we have been at a speedway in a while. The last two years we haven’t been able to compete like that.  It feels really good to lead a couple of laps and dice it up.  The handling got a little worse when we lost some of the track position, so we will work on that for the Daytona 500.  But, overall it was a very promising day for our Dow Chevrolet Camaro ZL1. We came out of there without a scratch on the car and we’ve got something for the 500, all my guys are excited. The race was really fun at the beginning when we had track position.  We had a fast car, got some pushes from the No. 22 and the No. 2 and I got to dice it up there. We lost track position and my car didn’t drive as good. We made a move there at the end from pretty far back and got up through there quite a way.  I was trying to get somebody to go with me, but I think everybody was scared of the Penske train up there that was running.  Those top three were pretty hard to get out of the way.  We will just have to figure out ways to work together with some of the other Camaro’s.  The ZL1’s are fast.  I think Chase Elliott and I both had really fast cars and I really liked working with him, so hopefully we can work good in the race.”

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