Richard Childress Racing’s Austin Dillon claimed his fourth NASCAR Xfinity Series win of the year on Friday night, his sixth in total from 94 career starts to complete a sweep of this year’s Xfinity races at Charlotte Motor Speedway having already been successful at the 1.5-mile track in the spring. He started the No. 33 Rheem Chevrolet Camaro on the pole and led 61 laps of the 200-lap event.
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It is his second victory and fourth top-10 finish in six NXS races at Charlotte Motor Speedway. Brad Keselowski was third, followed by Daniel Suarez and Regan Smith.
In the post-game interview room, Dillon showed reporters where his suit was burnt his suit.
“It was like looking at a movie screen and seeing all the lights crash right in front of you”, Dillon crew chief Danny Stockman said.
Dillon started from the pole but got off to a rough start and quickly gave away the lead.
Busch lost several positions after a Lap 147 restart, and he and Kahne raced aggressively for third place-with repeated side-by-side contact between the two cars, before Busch pulled ahead. Busch took his auto to the garage on Lap 154 and retired from the race in 31st place. The road got smoother when Kahne slammed into Busch on Lap 152 – an incident that began as a result of Busch’s issues on the restart.
“I don’t know why he started beating on me”, said Kahne, indicating that he did nothing to deserve Busch’s attention. Asked if he thought the incident would carry over into Saturday’s Sprint Cup Series race Kahne said, “He doesn’t want that battle”.
“I would hope not”, Kahne said. “I know two people close to me that are battling breast cancer, and this win is for them”. I think he was frustrated because his team mate kind of used him up and got away from him a little bit coming off turn 2.
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Kahne is not in the Chase. Points leader Chris Buescher finished seventh to actually put a coupe of points back onto his advantage with Chase Elliott finishing ninth, now 26 points back as the series moves on to Kansas with four races remaining. “We kept adjusting on the auto and making big swings at it to try to win the race”. Everyone is human, but we’ll work on cleaning it up a little bit. “I had a good time, so I like Charlotte a little more”.
