(Photo: Sam Draiss | The Podium Finish)
LONG POND, Pa. — Austin Dillon and Tyler Reddick were at odds about a crash that ended Dillon’s day in the closing laps at Pocono Raceway.
With 53 laps to go in Sunday’s HighPoint.com 400, the former teammates were battling three wide for position in the top 10 while entering the high-speed Turn 1. The two made contact, sending Dillon backward into the outside wall.
Dillon exited his No.3 Chevrolet Camaro for Richard Childress Racing and threw his helmet in the direction of Reddick’s No. 45 machine as it passed by under yellow.
Both drivers believed the other was to blame for the incident.
“I thought I was doing the right thing just going into the middle lane of the track. I wasn’t on the bottom lane. I was going to hold the middle. He drove up into me from the bottom lane,” Dillon told the media in an interview at the infield care center. “I just heard one interview where [Dale Earnhardt] Jr. thought I started coming down the corner and that’s kind of natural to enter the corner that way.
“I’m pissed about it because, from my perspective, I couldn’t see him. I know I was three wide, but I can’t see — my left front is in front of him. That’s the bigger thing. I’m in front of him, so I didn’t come down egregiously, he drove into the corner deep enough to try and get me back, like to get his right front in front of my left front. That was not possible with how I drove in the corner and he wiped me out at the fastest part of the track.”
(Photo: Wayne Riegle | The Podium Finish)
After Reddick drove to a runner-up, his best finish since Bristol Dirt in April, he didn’t take the blame for the incident. Reddick essentially chalked it up as a racing incident, explaining that the two drivers had seemingly different approaches while entering the corner. He said that he was surprised to see Dillon so upset.
“I had one plan of approach and had another, and unfortunately, just made contact. We hadn’t really had any moments today or anything really to kind of put us in the spot where we would have intentionally ran into each other,” Reddick said. “Contact was made on his left rear, kind of went flying up the racetrack at a really bad angle and into the wall. So, [the] biggest thing is I’m glad he’s OK because that’s a big hit. We’re three wide just trying to make it into the corner.
“I knew we didn’t have a lot of room, but I definitely wasn’t trying to squeeze him or run up the racetrack or anything like that. There’s plenty of ways to look back at it and analyze it. Certainly, I look at SMT to try and understand what happened beyond just the replay. But by the time I realized he was gonna be coming down across the racetrack the way that he was, I tried to get right to the break, but it was too late.”
Though he’s frustrated with Reddick, Dillon said that much of his frustration stems from the season as a whole. The 33-year-old from Lewisville, North Carolina has just five top 10s in 21 starts with an average finishing position of 21.9.
At 29th in points because of an L1 penalty following the race at Martinsville Speedway, Dillon faces a must-win situation to make it into the playoffs, a situation that he capitalized on last year at Daytona International Speedway.
“I’m just pissed about [how it] hasn’t been a great season for us,” Dillon said. “We’re having a pretty solid run, minding our own. He knows why he got to that position because the 6 got tight off the corner. He got to run, tried to split us three wide and we wrecked into Turn 1.”
Dillon told his team over the radio that he intended to speak with Reddick after the race.
