NASCAR CUP SERIES
INDIANAPOLIS MOTOR SPEEDWAY
TEAM CHEVY DRIVER QUOTES
JULY 26, 2025
Ty Dillon, driver of the No. 10 Kaulig Racing Chevrolet, met with the media in advance of the NASCAR Cup Series qualifying session at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The 33-year-old Welcome, North Carolina, native will represent Chevrolet in the championship round of NASCAR’s In-Season Challenge.
Media Availability Quotes:
Just talk a little bit about how this week has been and kind of the things your team did to prepare for this weekend.
“Yeah, the last couple weeks have been a bit of a whirlwind from Monday until the race, just with everything that’s been going on with the in-season tournament. It’s been quite welcomed and very fun.
We had a team luncheon on Tuesday, led by Chris Rice, which I appreciate. You know, we started it with saying, like, it’s weird that we’re having a luncheon after finishing 20th. But what this has done for our team, the morale, even just talking to the guys — the summer months are hard for the men and women at Kaulig Racing, and all the race teams, to keep finding motivation to work hard and build the best of the best each week. It’s easy to kind of pass through, but when you have good things happen and some momentum like we’ve had through the in-season tournament, it’s been super fun. And I appreciate the fact that Kaulig Racing Chris Rice, Matt Kaulig, aren’t afraid to pause and say — hey, this is a good thing, and let’s take this moment in because this is a lot of fun and good for everybody. So, that was great. It was a great moment on Tuesday, and we’re all excited for this weekend.”
It’s kind of hard to believe it’s been 11 years since you got your Xfinity Series win. That was a huge deal for you at that point in your career, but I’m curious, with you being consistently in the spotlight over the last five weeks with this in-season tournament ending here at Indianapolis — which has been more special, these five weeks or that one win here 11 years ago?
“I think it’s hard for me to fully give the credit to this five weeks right now. I think when I look back, this is going to be a special, special moment no matter what because I do ultimately want to win in the Cup Series, and I hope that that feels as great as these five weeks has been. But this has been — I don’t know how you even place it because this is the first time anybody’s really gone through this round, and being a 32 seed adds more to that and just the story that’s been built.
I haven’t won in the Cup Series, so I don’t know what it’d be like between the weeks, but it feels like the last three or four weeks, I’ve been in enough media and talked to enough people and had fan growth like I’ve never seen before, and that felt like I’ve won the last three weeks. So it’s a weird conundrum… it’s not a win, but it has felt so special to be a part of. Honestly, winning here in the Xfinity Series is something that’s given me confidence inside the race car for a long time. Some of that got played this week, and I had even forgotten — like when I won that race, I beat Kyle Busch. I’ve always remembered I beat Kyle straight up on a restart for the last 20 laps or so, and beat him head-to-head. So that always gave me so much confidence just for my career in general, especially coming here. But then I looked at the top-10 after that… I think Matt Kenseth finished third, (Kevin) Harvick finished fourth, (Kyle) Larson was in the top-10. Regan Smith and Paul Menard, who won here with RCR — the top-10 in the Xfinity Series then is so much different than it looks now, and I beat the best of the best at their peak in that time, in that race. So I always look back at that with so much confidence and fond memories. But this is a run that I don’t think I could have ever expected, based around something totally unique to our sport. I’m beyond grateful for what it’s done for me, the race team and our sponsors.
It might be a good question to ask me next year or in the future once I can kind of take it all in. Hopefully we have a Cup race win by then, too.”
(No Mic.)
“I don’t know how long they’ll last, or how long they’ll stick with me, and I really hope they do.
I’ve been around long enough to kind of ride the highs and lows of it, but it’s been massive. Every person I’ve seen at the racetrack is cheering me on to beat the next person, and just the acknowledgement from that has been incredible and the engagement online. Obviously our team and myself are having a lot of fun with just the social media side of it, the entertainment side of it, and I hope it tells the truth of our story. I hope I’m doing a good job of showing who I am as a person and also who our sponsors are and who our team is so that they’ll stick with us and continue to follow the growth because we’re heading in a great direction and hopefully they’ll ride with us through a lot more success.
A secret weapon for you over these last five weeks have been restarts. How does that translate to a place like this where there’s such a long frontstretch?
“Yeah, it translates quite well. I think the thing about this is there’s been a lot of talk about raw speed, which really matters here. If you look at the last five Cup races, at least almost every Cup race that I’ve been a part of here, the end of the race gets quite wild and there’s a lot of crashes here. That’s something you’ve got to take advantage of but also not put yourself in too bad of a spot, which fits my mentality as a driver and what I’ve excelled at in my career. I think that’s one thing that gives me confidence every time here is that I know when it gets chaotic, I feel comfortable and that’s been the story of my career. Give me less practice, give me less qualifying, give us some crazy. Whether it’s rain on the track, I’ve always excelled. Give me chaos and I feel calm in the chaos. This is one of those tracks that seems to induce some of that at the end of restarts, so I look forward to hopefully a little bit of that happening. I think that’s going to help in our favor.
You’re always looking to take advantage but you’ve got to do it in the right time and you can’t do it too soon in the race. Chris Rice has helped a lot with that this year for me. I think when you’re not at a place where you feel safe or comfortable at a team, it’s easy to push over your bounds to try to earn some respect or earn some confidence from your team. But Chris, Matt, Ty Norris and everybody at Kaulig Racing have given me so much confidence just by constant communication that ‘I want you to be you’.
Stating at Phoenix, Chris was like, we’re going to race the race one third at a time. First third, I don’t care what happens. We pass you, let’s just try not to go a lap down. Second, let’s try to find our momentum and get the car right. And the third, I want you to attack all-out. It sounds simple and silly but that’s really something that we’ve implemented and it’s been kind of the truth to our season. A lot of these tracks haven’t been to in two years, so it’s a little bit crazy for me to think I’m just going to out-power move people in the first-third of the race. So it’s been about growing, getting comfortable and then attack at the end. And that’s kind of been our goal and it’s really what’s played out through this whole in-season tournament for us.”
What would the one-million grand prize do for you and your team, especially when you’re competing against the powerhouse teams?
“Yeah, the money is awesome. It’ll get split up. By the time it all gets spread out between all of us, none of us are getting a million but we’re going to get a nice chunk of change, which is so grateful and we’re so appreciative that we have something so cool like that for something new in the middle of the season.
But for me, it’s bigger than the money. Money doesn’t change your happiness; it just makes you available to do some more fun things. But my true happiness resides in just having fun with my kids and sharing moments with them, but also sharing moments with the race team. The moments that we’ve been provided through this in-season tournament have been bigger than anything I’ve been a part of; the smiles and the hugs after the race and the good times that are rolling. This sport can pass you by and you can realize you just never had fun because you were so worried sick about your next opportunity or the next race or being the best. You can look back and not remember anything. I’ve been lucky enough to stick around where there’s been years that you look back and you’re like, I don’t remember one highlight from that year because I was so in my own head and so worried about everything going on. I guess growing older, being around a lot longer, I feel like coming into this thing I’ve already won and we’re on house money just because the moments and memories that we shared; the growth that we’ve had as a team, the confidence that we’re all building in each other and the future that’s right in front of us.
The money will be great. The trophy will be awesome to show around and have some more one-liners for everybody if we do this thing first, but the things that it’s already provided for our race team, for our sponsors, have been enough, and hopefully this is just the beginning of it.”
When you do get your chunk of the change, what is going to be your splurge purchase?
“I’ve got three kids, so we’ve got some futures to plan and work on. But boy, Chevy has a pretty beautiful Corvette. I’d like to get my name on that list of that fast Corvette that’s breaking all those records. But I don’t want to talk about it too much, like I said, but that would be one thing.
But honestly, I probably won’t do a whole lot with it. Probably manage it well, hopefully (laughs). I don’t have a real exciting answer. We need to do some remodeling around the house and some clean ups but not a whole lot.”
For the In-Season Challenge, how much of that is credit to the big picture you guys are building this season? You guys have executed week in and week out. how much of that success in these five weeks has added to the overall picture?
“I think what I appreciate the most from this In-Season Challenge is that it’s allowed us to get a little bit of light for that growth. You know, I’ve talked about a lot that we’ve had the recipe of success to our season with a lot of speed more speed than I’ve ever had in a Cup car, but we just didn’t execute the races. With this In-Season Challenge, people have got to see the moments where we’ve executed the last five weeks in a row, so that’s been big.
But just in general, NASCAR taking the chance to do this and TNT picking it up and running with it has been great. And then I think a lot of it — we’ve been probably the most direct beneficiary of it because of our story, but a lot of good things came together. I would say one of the unwritten stories that I give a lot of credit to is the fact that Denny Hamlin in the last year-and-a-half has leaned into his ‘Denny versus the world thing’ and played into a personality to kind of go at the fans. My kids and I watch a lot of WWE. It’s something we do. Learning how to entertain people is something that I think every driver should do homework and watch a little bit of because we deserve to give our fans a little bit more. Denny leaning into that and telling everybody that ‘he’s beat your favorite driver’, I mean he gets the loudest boos. And boos aren’t always a bad thing. Him doing that allowed me to have a little fun when we beat him in Atlanta, and I hope me being a little jovial and playing around will allow some more people to feel like they can have a little more personality. We have some great, wonderful race car drivers, but I think our sport is only going to grow if the best of our best can grow into a personality and really take the moment and harness the fans and the entertainment side of what we do, too.
What’s your plan to win and to beat Ty (Gibbs)? Is your sole focus going to be on him, where he’s running and how he’s doing, or are you going to just try to run a race and know that you beat him in this race last year?
“The conversation about him has been very minimal for us, and that’s been the process week in week out. We truly believe as a race team that’s why we’ve built so much confidence. If we execute our race and do the best to our abilities – no mistakes and out execute everybody in the field – we might not have the most speed to win the race but we’re going to do plenty to put pressure on him. And you know what they say about pressure, it creates diamonds or it’ll crack your pipes. So you know, that’s what we want to do to him — we want to put as much pressure on him as possible and see how they handle it. It’s worked out to this point. We’re going to worry about our race. Hopefully he massively underestimates us, and hopefully we’ll be there at the end to take advantage of it.”
There was some confusion this week on the subject of the million-dollar prize, whether the driver or the owner received that. You kind of alluded to it in one of your answers earlier but have you been told if you get the $1 million prize exactly, who gets that and how it’s going to be distributed among the team?
“I think that’s a bigger surprise to the media and the fans than it is to us drivers. That’s all in your contract stuff. As a driver, you’re negotiating and stuff like that. And if you’re not aware of your contract negotiations as a driver, that would be a surprise to you. It’s probably on you. I was well aware and I know my portion. But like I said, the money part isn’t everything about this. It is a cool thing, and it’s certainly welcomed and please add more money to it. My advice would be — I know I’m being late to the party, but I would have liked to have got some money for winning what I would call the NFC division of this tournament, you know the Eastern Conference final champion or at least something… a little acknowledgement to that like a banner or something or a trophy.
But I was well aware of that a long time ago, most drivers probably are. The only way that you would see 100% is if they did just present it to the driver, but it’s not just the driver. It’s not been me that’s gotten us to this point and this whole thing, so that wouldn’t be right in my opinion. Without my team, without the hard work that everyone at Kaulig Racing has put into it, we wouldn’t be here. So it’s not that big of a deal to me.”
When I talked to you briefly at Charlotte, I asked you about the bracket challenge and you were kind of nonchalant… most of the drivers were. But when I talked to Chris Rice this morning at the Xfinity trailer, we had an in-depth interview, he said that he’s been encouraging you, you’ve been encouraging the team all along, and got really excited about this. Where do you see this going for yourself?
“I was the first one that took a camera around probably in the sport. If you look at my YouTube page, it was a long time ago, I think I started that. But having kids and a full life, it’s hard to keep somebody else there around with you full-time. I hope people are getting enough of me when they pay attention because I don’t really manufacture who I am. When you see me, it’s the same guy all the time typically. This has been a great run for us, and I hope to get time to keep rolling. I try to do as much media and show my personality as possible.
If I’m honest, I had forgotten that we were doing the In-Season Challenge during the off-season. I was so excited just to have an opportunity to be back Cup racing, so I wasn’t really focused on that. I was focused on being the best driver I could be inside the race car. I think it was like two or three weeks — it was probably your interview where I was like, I really don’t know a whole lot about it and how it’s going to work out. And yeah, once it started and I saw the buy in from everybody, that got me excited. I really haven’t changed who I’ve been as a person because of this In-Season Challenge. I haven’t changed who I am as a driver. It’s just given me and our team a spotlight that wouldn’t have been here if this didn’t exist.”
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