AAA Texas 500 at Texas Motor Speedway: Takeaways and observations
By Ted Fleming
Here are five things that stood out after the AAA Texas 500, the next to last Chase race before the season finale in two weeks.
5. Will Austin Dillon go after Kevin Harvick at Phoenix?
There are some drivers who think because they started on the pole that they should be the first one across the finish line. Few go wire to wire although it gives them a leg up on the field for a good finish.
In the AAA Texas 500, Austin Dillon was having issues even before he blamed Kevin Harvick for helping him tag the outside wall after getting a bump from behind. Harvick immediately apologized over his radio, but that still did not calm down Dillon and his crew chief Slugger Labbe.
“He (Harvick) sucked down on my door all the way, like on it,” Dillon said. “I get it, you’ve got to hold a guy down, but he sucked down on my door and got me tight. That is the reason I slid up in front of him and then he didn’t lift he just turned me. There are two more weeks left.”
Labbe was more to the point as if saying some retaliation was ahead.
“Write down that number, we are going to Phoenix and he is going to need a win and we don’t,” he said.
Harvick’s response? “Slugger says a lot of things that he shouldn’t. All-in-all there was no intent there and I like racing with Austin and I like everything that they do and there was no reason to…I was running seventh and sixth. We were on a restart there and he slid up, and he got loose, and I hit the back of him.”
Stay tuned.