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Austin Dillon Agrees With Jimmie Johnson’s Assessment of How Rolex 24 Helps NASCAR Drivers

Published 01/30/2021, 7:00 AM EST

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The Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona is almost here and a few NASCAR drivers are competing. Ahead of the race weekend, Austin Dillon spoke about how he is adjusting to a new format. Earlier, Jimmie Johnson suggested that the endurance race actually helps the NASCAR drivers. Needless to say, Dillon agreed with that statement.

Speaking ahead of the 2021 Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona, Dillon said, “You come through different ranks of racing, like dirt racing. I started in the Crate Late Model, which is a small engine and small horsepower. You run those for a while and you think ‘This is very tough’, you get good at it faster.

“Then you go to a Super Late Model which is 850 horsepower and you’re going twice as fast.”

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So, if a driver goes back to the Crate Late Model cars, the driving style is different. Austin Dillon revealed that when he hopped on the simulator, he was able to go faster. Normally, he takes a couple of hours to get used to the Cup car, but this time, he got up to speed much quicker.

Austin Dillon has the same view as Jimmie Johnson

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According to him, the experience simply slows everything down. “It slows everything down, like Jimmie said. I feel like that’s the best thing,” Dillon added.

He also acknowledged that AJ Allmendinger has raced on road courses for a long time. So, his experience is a lot different.

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Once the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona concludes, the drivers will shift focus to the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series season. In addition to that, this race also makes for great practice for the Daytona 500. Aside from Dillon, Chase Elliott is another driver on the Rolex 24 Hours grid.

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Hopefully, this should hand them some sort of advantage over their NASCAR Cup Series rivals for the Daytona 500.

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Written by:

Dhruv George

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Dhruv George is a senior Formula One and NASCAR analyst for EssentiallySports, having authored nearly 12000 articles spanning different sports like F1, NASCAR, Tennis, NFL, and eSports. He graduated with a PG Diploma in Journalism from the Xavier Institute of Communications. Dhruv has also conducted interviews with F1 driver Pierre Gasly and Moto2 rider Tony Arbolino.
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