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Austin Dillon's crew urges him to wreck Joey Logano, Denny Hamlin to secure win at Cook Out 400

FaceProfileby:Thomas Goldkamp•08/11/24
Austin Dillon
Mandatory Credit: John David Mercer-USA TODAY Sports

The end of the Cook Out 400 featured some serious drama after a late caution led to overtime. Then Austin Dillon cleared out Joey Logano and Denny Hamlin in the final lap to take the win.

Dillon had to get into Logano’s back bumper to spin him around or he wouldn’t have cleared him, so he did.

“Whatever it takes,” Dillon said on the USA broadcast after a win that came out of the blue and clinched a playoff spot for him.

That echoed what his crew had told him on the team radio just before the crash that determined the winner. According to The Athletic’s Jeff Gluck, Dillon’s team had a poignant message for him as he sought the win.

“I don’t care how you do it,” the crew said before he hit Logano. And then, “Wreck him! Wreck him!” before he hit Hamlin.

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After Dillon took out both and won the race, he got his props from his ownership team.

“Pop Pop is proud of you,” Richard Childress said.

Joey Logano, Denny Hamlin livid with Austin Dillon

Unsurprisingly, Logano was visibly heated after the race, while Hamlin took a more moderate stance but was still quite unhappy.

Logano called Dillon’s move “chickenshit,” then blasted him as a driver, saying: “He’s a piece of crap, he sucks. He’s sucked his whole career.”

Hamlin shifted some of the blame to NASCAR.

“Absolutely a line was crossed,” Hamlin said on the post-race broadcast. “But it’s an invisible line and it’s not defined. I mean they have rules and provisions for stuff like this, but they never take action for it.”

Hamlin was asked if Austin Dillon’s move to wreck both drivers was fair or foul.

“It’s obviously foul, but it’s fair in NASCAR,” he said. “We’re just a different league, right, where there is no penalties for rough driving or anything like that. So it opens up the opportunity for Austin to be able to just do whatever he wants.”