DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – At 12:52 p.m. ET Sunday (Aug. 28) a rumble of thunder, arguably the loudest of the weekend, rolled over Daytona International Speedway.
It came just as Martin Truex Jr., the NASCAR Cup driver clinging to a playoff spot, rolled into the track’s media center.
“That sounds beautiful,” Truex deadpanned to no one in particular.
At the moment, Truex was one of two drivers in a large, mostly empty room at the back of the building. Once the location of pre-race driver meetings, it was now used to interview drivers during unwelcome rain delays.
This rain delay had the Cup Series’ regular-season finale paused with 21 laps to go. The rain storm in question was also the culprit of a 13-car pile-up in turn 1. At the time of the red flag, Truex had only a three-point advantage over Ryan Blaney for the final spot.
The only other driver in the room was one of the very few who had not gotten caught up in the melee. Laps after receiving the lucky dog to get back on the lead lap, he had somehow avoided the carnage, driving between the wrecking car of Harrison Burton and Truex, who had spun into the grass at the bottom of turn 2.
When he came out on the other end, he’d taken his No. 3 Chevrolet from roughly 16th to first in two turns.
Before giving an interview with NBC, Truex looked over at the other driver.
“You just get the lucky dog?” Truex asked.
“Yeah, just got the lucky dog,” Austin Dillon answered.
Truex asked if he had been doing a “rain dance.”
“I’m hoping,” Dillon answered with a chuckle. “Lightning, whatever.”
As interviews went on, Dillon sat on a stage at the far end of the room, flanked by his PR representative, quietly waiting.
The Richard Childress Racing driver had entered the race 19th in the point standings. His only way to advance to the 16-driver playoff was to win at Daytona for the second time in his Cup career.
But right now, all he could do was wait.
“You go in that room where they make you sit and put the camera on you forever, and it’s like you’re thinking in the back of your head that somebody’s gonna walk around the corner and say, ‘Hey, congratulations, you won,” Dillon said later. “But you don’t let your mind drift to that. It’s like, you still got laps to go. And I knew after that second storm, I had to get my mind right that if they didn’t call it then we were going back green.”
Add to that, he was very cold.
“I didn’t have a dry shirt for a little…
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