There is a school of thought suggesting that beyond being the center of controversy or being polarizing, the worst thing a race car driver can do is be irrelevant. And despite having struggled for most of the 2024 season, Austin Dillon could not be more relevant in the late stages of the regular season.
Faced with a late caution wiping out one of the single best performances of his Cup career and letting his golden opportunity to make the NASCAR playoffs go to waste, Dillon decided to take victory at Richmond by any means necessary, cleaning out Joey Logano in the final corner and then putting Denny Hamlin in the wall for good measure to earn his fifth career win and vault himself from outside the top 30 in points to the No. 13 seed on the playoff grid. In the process, the driver of the No. 3 forced NASCAR’s hand three days later: Though Dillon will be allowed to keep his win, NASCAR announced Wednesday that his win will not count toward playoff eligibility among other penalties, given he had clear intent to wreck both the driver of the No. 22 and No. 1 in the final corner in order to get it.
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In spite of the penalties as well as the rest of the fallout from his victory, Dillon’s win reflects positively in his place in the CBS Sports Power Rankings, as he goes from being unranked to 20th in the latest Power Rankings following Richmond:
RANK DRIVER CHANGE COMMENT
1 Tyler Reddick — Strange but true: In all of Austin Dillon’s three most recent Cup wins, Tyler Reddick has crossed the finish line in second. Reddick ran second at Texas in 2020 and Daytona in 2022 before being scored third at Richmond after it was ruled the caution flew before the finish line.
2 Christopher Bell
Christopher Bell led the second-most laps of anyone at Richmond, pacing the field five times for 122 laps. Though Richmond is one of his best tracks, Sunday night marked only the first time that Bell has led over 100 laps there.
3 Ryan Blaney
When he won at Pocono a month ago, Ryan Blaney made a repeat trip to Victory Lane at a track he had won before for only the second time in his career. He’ll hope to replicate that at Michigan, where he first won back in 2021.
4 Kyle Larson
Prior to Richmond on Sunday, Kyle Larson spent his Saturday taking his third win in the Knoxville Nationals in the past four years. Larson is one of eight drivers all-time with multiple Knoxville Nationals wins, a group including sprint car icons like Steve Kinser and Donny Schatz.
5 Bubba Wallace
Bubba Wallace is rising to the occasion with his season on the line. Richmond saw Wallace tie his season-best finish of fourth and earn consecutive top fives for the first time since Daytona and Atlanta at the start of the year.
6 Chase Elliott
With three races to go in the regular season, the battle for the regular-season championship is set to be as narrow and dramatic as we’ve ever seen since 2017. Kyle Larson, Tyler Reddick and Chase Elliott are currently separated by a scant six points at the top of the standings.
7 Joey Logano
I wonder what Peyton Sellers felt watching Joey Logano get cleaned out in the final corner. Years ago back in 2009, it was Sellers who got his clock cleaned by Logano in the final corner as Logano drove on to win the Toyota All-Star Showdown in the old K&N Pro Series (Logano was then stripped of the win for rough driving, awarding the victory to Matt Kobyluck).
8 Daniel Suarez
It probably wasn’t realistic to expect Daniel Suarez would be able to chase Austin Dillon all the way down by taking option tires on his last stop, but the mere fact that he was on pace to possibly do so on the final long run was a testament to what the option tires added to Richmond. NASCAR and Goodyear have something that they can absolutely work with on short tracks and potentially beyond.
9 Brad Keselowski
As Rochester Hills native Brad Keselowski continues to look for his first Cup win at Michigan, it certainly feels like he aligned himself with the right car owner in Jack Roush. Roush cars have won 14 times at Michigan in total, including last year with Chris Buescher.
10 Ross Chastain
There were some in the aftermath of Richmond’s finish who likened what Austin Dillon did to a “video game move.” Somehow, that comparison felt a lot different and certainly less celebratory than when Dale Jr. declared Ross Chastain pulled a video game move in the “Hail Melon” two years ago.
11 William Byron
Three years ago, William Byron finished a close second to Ryan Blaney for his best career finish at Michigan. But that run is one of only two career top 10s he has at that track, a place where he has an average finish of 16.7 — a mark dragged down by a DNF there last year.
12 Michael McDowell
Michael McDowell’s objective for this week will likely be to just get through the race and start focusing on trying to win Daytona. In 17 career starts at Michigan, McDowell has never finished better than 20th in 2021.
13 Denny Hamlin
I do think it’s fair to suggest that NASCAR should take action on rough driving like Denny Hamlin argued for after Richmond, so long as Hamlin himself is willing to be held to that standard. Him turning Chase Elliott for the lead late at Martinsville in 2017, in this case, certainly would qualify as worthy of sending a driver to the tail end of the lead lap.
14 Chris Buescher
The next three races for Chris Buescher are at tracks he won at in 2023 — Michigan and Daytona — followed by Darlington, where he arguably should have won back in May. At now three points back of the cut line, Buescher has as good an opportunity to take his destiny into his own hands as he could have asked for.
15 Carson Hocevar
Carson Hocevar was terrific yet again at Richmond, finishing eighth for his third top 10 of the season and tying his career-best finish set at Gateway in June. That finish allowed Hocevar to leapfrog over Josh Berry in the points standings, meaning he now holds a two-point advantage in the fight for the Rookie of the Year crown.
16 Todd Gilliland
Like his Front Row Motorsports teammate in McDowell, Todd Gilliland will head to Michigan to try and change his fortunes. In two Cup starts there, Gilliland has only finished 27th and 29th.
17 Alex Bowman
The last time NASCAR raced at Michigan, Alex Bowman had one of the stronger runs he had in a difficult 2023 season with the Detroit Pistons on board his car. A crash relegated him to 33rd, and things didn’t work out for the Pistons either as they went 14-68, posting the worst record in the NBA and the worst record in franchise history.
18 Martin Truex Jr.
After losing an engine at Richmond, Martin Truex Jr. now stands 78 points above the playoff cut line. He should be fine if there’s at least one repeat winner in the next three races, but no one should be penciling him in yet — especially not after what happened in 2022 where a rash of different winners and a lack of a win himself caused him to miss the playoffs despite being top five in the points standings.
19 Ty Gibbs
If Martin Truex Jr. should be somewhat nervous over the next three weeks, Ty Gibbs should be sweating bullets. What once looked like a secure and virtually certain playoff berth for him is in jeopardy after three-straight finishes of 22nd or worse have left him only 18 points above the cut line.
20 Austin Dillon
Let’s disregard what anyone thinks about the finish at Richmond for a moment: For as much grief as he gets for who he is and what car he drives, Austin Dillon’s fifth career Cup win ties him with drivers like Ward Burton, Dave Marcis and Jeremy Mayfield on NASCAR’s all-time wins list. At the end of the day, he’s a pretty good driver and has had a pretty good career.
21 Noah Gragson
This weekend’s trip to Michigan marks just how far Noah Gragson has come in a years’ time. It was Michigan weekend a year ago where Gragson was pulled from his car at Legacy Motor Club and suspended by NASCAR for inappropriate conduct on social media, leading to his departure from the team and a fall sabbatical that ended with him rebuilding his career at Stewart-Haas.
22 Josh Berry
Drivers missing races due to COVID feels like so long ago, doesn’t it? Josh Berry got his first two Cup starts in 2021 as a COVID fill-in, the second of which came at Michigan when he was summoned to fill in for Corey LaJoie.
23 Zane Smith — Back in 2020, Michigan was the site of Zane Smith’s first career win in the Craftsman Truck Series. It launched his career in that series, as he would earn nine career Truck wins and the 2022 series championship prior to getting called up to Cup this year.
24 Austin Cindric
On the subject of bump ’em-and-dump ’em wins, it took Austin Cindric awhile to recover from the way he earned his first Truck Series win at Mosport in 2017. Cindric spun Kaz Grala out on the final lap to take the win, a move that didn’t go over well as Cindric was still trying to build his credibility as a stock car racer.
25 Kyle Busch
The way Richmond’s finish unfolded overshadowed the dramatic turnaround in performance by RCR which saw Dillon serve as the head of the spear. Kyle Busch wasn’t that far behind himself, finishing a respectable 12th.
26 Justin Haley
As much as Justin Haley has been exactly what Rick Ware Racing hoped for in a driver, the price of his impressive performance for them my be that they won’t be able to keep him for 2025. There’s been a steady drumbeat that Haley could be a candidate for the Spire Motorsports No. 7 that is now open for next year.
27 Chase Briscoe
Ever since a runner-up finish at New Hampshire, Chase Briscoe has had just one top 15 and only one finish better than 21st in his last five races.
28 Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
Ricky Stenhouse Jr. proved to be the ultimate fly in the ointment at Richmond. If he and Ryan Preece don’t wreck with two laps to go, we’re all talking about how Austin Dillon had maybe the best race of his entire career and how well the prime and option tires worked to put on a good race. Go figure.
29 Daniel Hemric
Although Daniel Hemric has three top 10s this season and has also had several more good runs, he also has seven finishes of 30th or worse, including at Richmond this past week. Near the end of the regular season, Hemric and his team have habitually proven to have a high ceiling but a low floor.
30 Corey LaJoie
There’s an argument to be made that Corey LaJoie got a raw deal from Spire in being informed he wouldn’t be driving for them next year despite having a contract in place to do so. But at the same time, this could be an opportunity for LaJoie to build more of a winning pedigree should be opt to go back to the Xfinity or Truck Series. Without the benefit of stable and competitive opportunities in either of those series, LaJoie had to build his career racing full-time in lesser Cup cars from 2017 onward.
