When asked to rate his season on a scale of 1 to 10, Austin Dillon gave himself a 6.5/10.
Speaking to the media earlier this afternoon at Richmond International Raceway, Dillon was asked to rate his season on a scale of 1 to 10.
“I would say it’s a 6.5/7, let’s say 6.5 because I feel like we could get the half point back with some mistakes we made throughout the center of the year,” Dillon said. “We would be at a 7 and I think that would have us locked in the Chase right now. We are pretty close to locked in, but you never know what happens when it comes to race day.”
Twenty-five races into the 2016 season, the driver of the No. 3 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet has had a career season with four top fives, up 300 percent from 2015, 10 top 10’s, up 100 percent from 2015, a pole position and a 14.8 finishing average. While he’s only led eight laps this season, down from 39 the year before, he currently sits 12th in points and nine points ahead of the Chase cutoff.
Despite all this, Dillon says mistakes have prevented him from being in a more comfortable position going into the final race of the regular season.
“I would have liked to have been at the 7 at this point, so there is a half point or a point that I would like to have back just because of mistakes that we made as a group and as a company that put us behind,” he added. “I really think we had a solid year starting and in the middle we just kind of dropped off because of certain things, we had brake failures, we had different things that happened that didn’t go our way, but we have learned from them and able to capitalize and have that 6.5 at this point.”
