Austin Dillon and JR Motorsports both benefitted from his grandfather accompanying him to Atlanta on Saturday (July 10).
Richard Childress and Dillon were at Atlanta Motor Speedway on Saturday, which was sooner than expected. Meanwhile, JR Motorsports was looking for a driver to fill in for injured Michael Annett in its No. 1 car.
Dillon received a last-minute call telling him to get in the car.
How last-minute was Dillon’s decision? He was overheard asking who his crew chief and spotter were during the television broadcast.
According to Dillon, it all started when Austin Craven, Team Dillon’s Business Director, received word through text message that Annett would not be in the car.
That quickly got the ball rolling. Dillon’s afternoon went from a leisurely afternoon to his first NASCAR Xfinity Series race on a 1.5-mile track since 2015. Dale Earnhardt Jr., the owner of JR Motorsports, was contacted.
“I called Junior and said, ‘Hey, you want me to drive?’” Dillon said. “He goes, ‘Yeah, get in it.’ I was like, ‘OK.’
Agreeing to drive was one thing. The logistics followed next, with Dillon being transported in a golf cart.
“So, I stole a golf cart from a TV compound, I drove it to my bus, put my Bass Pro [Shops] firesuit on, and once I got it on, I needed a helmet,” Dillon said. “Craven ran and got that from outside the track in our trailer. The hybrid [helmet] was Annett’s, which was pretty big for me. We tightened it as much as we could and sat in the car.”
The problems for Dillon didn’t stop there, as he received assistance from JR Motorsports driver Justin Allgaier in quickly acclimating to the car.
“The gas pedal, my foot was stretched completely out to get wide open,” Dillon said. “The brake pedal, I could barely touch it, which is a good thing, You don’t want to be touching brakes … much, anyway.”
Dillon climbed into the top ten early on and remained in the top five throughout the final stage, at least until tire wear became a factor. He came in 11th place.
“It was a lot of fun, I’ve got to thank JR Motorsports,” Dillon said. “The car was solid. I was probably a little bit tentative. If I would have hit the wall, it probably wouldn’t have been real fun. I was a little loose in the seat. It was fun, I had a blast.”
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