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Photo: HP/HAROLD HINSON
NASCAR Cup Series

NASCAR Nuggets: Austin Dillon’s Advice For Ty Gibbs

April 28, 2022

Austin Dillon and Ty Gibbs are a generation apart and compete in different NASCAR series, but their careers have quite a bit in common.

Both drive for famous and wealthy grandfathers who have been in NASCAR for decades –  Richard Childress and Joe Gibbs.

And neither have ever raced in outright bad equipment.

Dillon seems like the right person to get perspective on the current moment in Gibbs’ career.

A few weeks ago, the rookie Xfinity Series driver escalated a last lap on-track incident with Sam Mayer at Martinsville Speedway into a pit road brawl.

At 19 and in his first full-time Xfinity season, it was undoubtedly the lowest point so far in a short NASCAR career where everything has seemed to come up in Gibbs’ favor. The label of “villain” has been applied to Gibbs, who has only made 27 NASCAR starts.

Dillon, who like Gibbs has had to face criticism about a racing career that’s benefited from who he’s related to, was in the Fox Sports TV booth the night of the Martinsville race.

How does he view Gibbs’ current situation?

“I think it’s all just experience, youth,” Dillon told SPEED SPORT last weekend at Talladega Superspeedway. “As he grows, his true personalities are going to show and who does he want to be when it comes out, where he shows more of his personality? Who is Ty Gibbs going to be like? Or is he going to be himself? For me, there’s some times where I wish I would have showed more emotion. And there’s times where I liked the emotion that I’ve shown.

“I won a Xfinity championship, I won the Truck championship and been successful winning in the Cup series. The Cup series seems to really show mold and show who guys really are when they get to the Cup series, because no one ever dominates the Cup series. The closest to that is three guys: Jimmie (Johnson), Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt. But it just creates adversity in the Cup Series more than any other series. So that’s when you know that true personality will show and I think Ty will morph into whoever he’s going to be the longer we have him here.”

What Dillon’s advice to Gibbs on how he navigates the NASCAR waters as he further establishes himself?

“Be true to yourself, understanding … you have a long career ahead of you and that every weekend brings something new,” Dillon said.

A Piece Of History

If you happen to stop by Trackhouse Racing’s headquarters in Concord, North Carolina – previously home to Chip Ganassi Racing – you’ll quickly find a significant piece of NASCAR history.

Located in the shop’s lobby is a No. 33 Skoal Bandit car once driven by Harry Gant.

But this isn’t just any No. 33 Chevrolet driven by Gant. It’s the exact car Gant drove to four consecutive NASCAR Cup Series wins in September 1991.

Justin Marks, the co-owner of Trackhouse, bought the car from Andy Petree, who was Gant’s crew chief in the early 90s.

What inspired Marks to acquire the car and put it in display at his team’s headquarters?

“I’m a huge fan of the sport,” Marks said Sunday after Ross Chastain’s win at Talladega. “I want to be a steward of the sport’s history and the sport’s future. I’m fortunate enough at my house to have a Tim Richmond Blue Max Racing suit hanging on my wall. Liz Allison gave me one of Davey’s suits from ’93 that I have in the house.

“If Trackhouse can make investments to help preserve the history of the sport, that’s kind of what we want to do. We want to honor the history of the sport.

“Mr. September, Harry Gant, won all those races in that car for Andy Petree. I told Andy, ‘If you ever want to sell that car, I’ll buy it.’ It’s sitting right there.”

Marks wants to give the Gant car some attention at NASCAR’s throwback weekend at Darlington Raceway next week.

“I want to ask NASCAR if they’ll let me take a couple laps in it at Darlington on throwback weekend,” Marks said with a smile. “I haven’t asked that question yet, but I’m asking it now.”

It would be appropriate. Of the four Cup races Gant won in September 1991, the first came in the Southern 500 at Darlington.

Family Throwback

Speaking of throwback, Harrison Burton’s scheme for the race at Darlington was a surprise to the rookie.

The Wood Brothers Racing driver will pilot a scheme based on the Exide car his father Jeff Burton drove in 2000.

“I kind of was googling like old Wood Brothers schemes to run, because I figured that’s kind of what we were gonna do,” Burton said at Talladega Saturday. “

“(The team said) ‘Okay, we’ll handle it,” Burton said. “Then I got an email. It was like, ‘This is your throwback,’ and it was my dad’s scheme. I thought it was really neat. I always wanted to run that scheme, especially when I got to Cup in the throwback race because in Xfinity I tried to run all his all Xfinity schemes, and now I’m running all of his Cup schemes. It’s pretty neat. … The car ran the year I was born.”

 

TV Ratings

Aside from the significant dip at Martinsville Speedway, the ratings for NASCAR Cup races continue to be positive so far in 2022.

Sunday’s Cup at Talladega was the most watched race since the Daytona 500, with an average of 4.82 million viewers. That’s basically flat from the 2021 spring race, which had 4.7 million.

Nine of the first 10 Cup races have aired on the main Fox network. The outlier was Martinsville, which was delayed by rain for almost an hour and aired on FS1.

The next four race weekends – Dover, Darlington, Kansas and the All-Star Race at Texas – will all air on FS1.

Saturday’s NASCAR Xfinity race at Talladega – which featured Jeffrey Earnhardt driving a black No. 3 for Richard Childress Racing, drew in 2.061 million viewers. That made it the most watched Xfinity Series race since the 2017 season-opener at Daytona.