NASCAR In-Season Challenge hero reveals change in playoff focus

The star of NASCAR's inaugural In-Season Challenge has claimed that the $1 million knockout tournament is taking attention from the Cup Series playoff race...and that that's a good thing.

Ty Dillon came in as the 32nd seed in the 32-driver single-elimination tournament, but took advantage of wrecks for 1-seed Denny Hamlin and 17-seed Brad Keselowski in the first two rounds to progress into the final eight.

NASCAR HEADLINES: Cup Series champ set for series switch as Hamlin and 23XI receive legal boost

While there was a not-insignificant element of luck in those first two days, Dillon showed that he's not just blessed by the NASCAR gods in the last two rounds be going wheel-to-wheel with Alex Bowman and John Hunter Nemechek, passing Bowman at the last corner at Sonoma and finishing a single place ahead of Nemechek last week at Dover.

Speaking to Jeff Gluck for the Athletic writer's 12 Questions feature, Dillon claimed that the tournament has shone some mid-season light on teams like his No. 10 car and others who are out of the playoff fight barring a shock race win.

Dillon: We've been beating Hendrick cars regularly

The In-Season Tournament, he argued, has helped to shine a light on the fact that he and his team are performing better than they'd been expected to in pre-season.

"We’ve run really well," he said. "We’ve had some bad results based off late-race mistakes, but before that, we were running top 15 or top 18.

"That’s kind of where we’ve been living – and beating a lot of these top teams. It’s not all of them in a Hendrick organization, but we usually beat one or two a week. And that’s a pretty solid deal for Kaulig Racing. Our points position doesn’t really show what we’ve done.

"What this in-season tournament has done — usually all the focus is on who’s going to make the last spot in the (playoffs) and who’s winning the race. That’s all the TV shows and media usually talk about. But now that the focus has shifted – racing Atlanta (in Round 1) gave us an opportunity to get this far – people are seeing that there are more interesting things going on in the sport.

"Our team has been really solid the last three weeks: Eighth, 20th, and 17th [and later 20th at Dover after the interview]. That’s not a bad average finish. We’ve just executed races better at the end."

Dillon will face off against his fellow Ty, Ty Gibbs, at Indianapolis this weekend to determine the first ever Cup Series In-Season Tournament champion.

READ MORE: Kyle Busch dealt playoff blow as multiple drivers drop down the order at Dover

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