Ty Dillon and the No. 10 Mark III team started Sunday’s race at Martinsville Speedway from the 28th position and with focus and determination, moved into the top 25 by the end of stage one. With a fast Chevy, the team made routine stops during the second stage and Dillon was scored 20th at the end of the stage. Happy with the handling of the No. 10 Chevy and the direction the team was going, Dillon was able to run as high as 13th in the final stage before crossing the finish line in 15th.
“I’m really happy with our performance today. Our Mark III Camaro was solid in practice and we built off that. We had a decent qualifying run, just the result didn’t really show the potential we had in the car. I think as a team we were just really patient and focused on executing and not taking ourselves out of the race. We knew we had a decent enough car to get back up there and Andrew (Dickeson, crew chief) made a good call giving us an advantage there at the end on tires to battle back to the top 15. I’m just proud of our effort to bounce back. We worked really hard last week and the result didn’t show. This week to have a really good effort and to get the result this week was really good, so happy all around.”
– Ty Dillon
No. 16 Black’s Tire Service Camaro ZL1
Start: 23rd
Stage 1 Finish: Third
Stage 2 Finish: 20th
Finish: 23rd
Allmendinger reported early his Black’s Tire Service Chevy was lacking grip and drive off. On the first stop of the day, the team made a wedge adjustment to help with the handling of the car. Allmendinger restarted in 26th and was running 19th when the next caution came out on lap 71. Crew chief, Trent Owens, and Allmendinger collectively decided to stay out and make a run for stage points. Allmendinger went to finish the opening stage in third, earning eight stage points. In the second stage, Allmendinger reported his Chevy was freer than the run before and he still needed more forward drive. After contact on the right rear in the final stage, Allmendinger came to pit road under caution for four fresh tires to eliminate concern of the tire going down. The No. 16 car was able to make up the track position and later maintained position inside the top 20. When the caution came out on lap 298, Allmendinger was running 17th and stayed out to save tires for a potential late race caution. As the laps winded down, Allmendinger continued to lose grip in the car, causing him to fall back to 23rd.
“I thought we did fairly well today trying to make the most of our day; we fought the balance of the race car in general. We made a good decision there to get stage points in the first stage so that helped our day, for sure. Unfortunately, we lost it completely on the last run, got way too loose and that cost us a few spots. We knew it was an uphill battle all day and besides the last run, we really made the most of the day. It’s a little disappointing to not run a little bit better, but we generally understand why, and we’ll move on to Darlington.”
