LONG POND — It was a shower of Yuengling in Victory Lane.
As soon as Austin Dillon exited the Yuengling Light Lager-sponsored No. 3 Chevrolet Silverado on Saturday, his crew on the Pocono Raceway porch above him pelted the 24-year-old winner of the Pocono Mountains 150 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race with beer from the cans each of them held.
Two cans were thrown to team owner Richard Childress and foam from the brew washed over his right hand as he spoke.
“This is so important to the many fans who have talked to us about Yuengling beer,” said Childress, who will visit the D.G. Yuengling, Inc., brewery in Pottsville with NASCAR Nationwide driver Ty Dillon on Thursday.
Childress noted he put a truck into the race for one reason.
“Because this is Yuengling’s hometown,” he said.
In a way, Saturday in Long Pond was that for both Yuengling and Dillon, who got his sixth career win in the truck series. In representing the brewery, Austin
replaced younger brother Ty, who has an eight-race deal with Yuengling as title sponsor in eight Nationwide races, in the Richard Childress Racing truck.
“Yuengling Light gave us this opportunity. I circled this race on the map at the beginning of the year, and wanted to win it,” said Dillon, who won the race in a green-white-checkered finish after keeping the lead on a late restart. “I knew we could come out here (in first place).”
However, it was a nervous day for Dillon after the Welcome, North Carolina, resident stated Friday that his goal for the Pocono Mountains 150 was the pole for the 32-truck event.
It nearly happened, but didn’t. After leading the field with his lap in qualifying’s first of three sessions, Dillon lost the pole to Kyle Larson in a one-lap dash in the final qualifying session’s closing seconds. Therefore, he started to Larson’s outside of the front row.
Hours later at the green flag of the Pocono Mountains 150, Dillon then found himself falling farther and farther behind Larson.
“We made the first lap, and we were about two seconds off the pace, and Pop-Pop (Childress) came over the radio and said, ‘You can’t be two seconds off the pace in a truck.’ We showed him how,” Dillon said about his team owner and grandfather. “(Crew chief) Nick (Harrison) was able to recover and did a great job.”
In fact, Dillon rallied to lead the race twice, but then fell back, dropping to 19th after a pit stop for fuel on the 30th lap.
“Everybody in the garage knew it was going to be one of those real-tight, one-stop-to-the-end races,” Harrison said. “When the other guys pitted early on (the 18th lap), especially Larson, I felt like, ‘OK, that’s the way we’re racing. He’s pitting early. Let’s not.’ That would be the way we can get some clean air.”
Larson’s day was eventually derailed to 18th place by an engine problem while Dillon received the benefit of several caution periods which both enabled the field to bunch up and allowed Dillon to advance positions as others pitted.
When the truck of Kyle Martel slammed the first-turn wall when the left rear tire went flat with nine laps remaining, Dillon found himself alongside an unexpected driver on a front-row restart. NASCAR Sprint Cup standout Clint Bowyer had replaced John Wes Townley, injured in a crash while qualifying for Friday’s ARCA ModSpace 125, in Townley’s No. 05 truck.
Bowyer chose to restart on the outside, but Dillon got to the front by exiting the first turn before him. The race was then slowed almost immediately when the trucks of German Quiroga and Tyler Reddick collided, sending Reddick spinning into the fence on the Long Pond straightaway.
This time, Dillon chose the top and again got ahead of Bowyer, but Reddick, who had returned onto the track, found Quiroga and ran into the back of Quiroga’s No. 77, putting Quiroga into the wall at nearly the same spot as the preceding accident. NASCAR called Reddick into the pits to stay after the crash.
Once again, Dillon and Bowyer shared the front row, now for a green-white-checkered finish, with Johnny Sauter’s truck behind Dillon, who chose the outside.
“I’m not looking in the mirror,” Sauter, a Camping World Truck Series regular, said. “I’m going to keep pushing until I can’t push no more the guy in front of me. That’s basically what we did there with the 3 truck and was able to clear myself (to second place). … Obviously, being on the outside groove is preferred because you get such a run off Turn 1.”
Noting he had to conserve fuel throughout the day to allow the one-stop strategy to work, Dillon said, “It was pretty cool that Johnny could work with me there at the end. That was an awesome restart and it definitely helped me out.”
In fact, Sauter not only got second place, but Joey Coulter, who won the race for Richard Childress Racing in 2012, drove into third place ahead of Bowyer.
“Kyle Larson was the class of the field and luckily blew up and gave Austin and I a chance, and Austin capitalized,” Bowyer said.
Armed with the lead, Dillon drove off, eventually beating Sauter to the checkered flag on the 64-lap race by 1.916 seconds to record an historic victory on two fronts. The truck series win for Chevrolet was its first in 13 races, dating back to a triumph by Ty Dillon last season, and ended Toyota’s 12-race winning streak. It also was the first time the number 3 was in Victory Lane at Pocono since the late Dale Earnhardt Sr. won a then-Winston Cup race there in 1993.
And then, after the customary burnout before the crowd in the Pocono grandstands, Dillon maneuvered his truck into Victory Lane and the beer shower ensued.
The moment wasn’t lost on Dillon, who earlier in the day put his No. 3 American Ethanol NASCAR Sprint Cup car into the second-turn fence, necessitating quick repairs in time for today’s GoBowling.com 400.
“I smashed the wall in practice and was disappointed before we got into the truck,” said Dillon, who won $33,695 for his checkers. “Now I’m happy again.”
He credited his brother’s Nationwide victory at Indianapolis as a reason for it.
“It puts the fire back in you because you want to get back to that place again,” Dillon said. “Seeing him in Victory Lane, being with him in Victory Lane is a special thing. Time to time, you have to be reminded how special it is.”
On the other hand, Childress made sure to make the most of the sponsorship opportunity that put his race team in that most desired place in racing.
“I love the people, the Poconos, the people you meet up here,” he said. “Great restaurants you can go to. So I really love the Poconos area, and I especially love Yuengling Light beer.”