Dillon & Gibbs Advance To In-Season Tournament Final

Ty Dillon (left) and Ty Gibbs (right) have advanced to the $1 million final round of NASCAR's inaugural In-Season Tournament on TNT. (Images by Peter Casey/Nigel Kinrade Photography)

DOVER, Del. – The “Ty” was put into the “TY”tle round of NASCAR’s inaugural In-Season Tournament with authority after a tight semifinal round at Dover Motor Speedway.

Kaulig Racing’s Ty Dillon (32) and Joe Gibbs Racing’s Ty Gibbs (6) each advanced from their semifinal matchups during the AutoTrader EchoPark Automotive 400 to move to the prize fight for $1 million.

Gibbs outlasted Tyler Reddick (#23), finishing fifth to Reddick’s 12th at the ‘Monster Mile’. The 22-year-old still has yet to win a race in the Cup Series, but he’s one race away from taking the inaugural In-Season Challenge.

“For me, the biggest thing right now is to go for wins, and then to try and do the best I can to get a good finish,” Gibbs said after the race. “I think that's the most important part; this [in-season tournament] is just fun, even though it does kind of come into play late in a race like this ... when you know you're down to racing for a shot to go run for a million [dollars] next week.

“My Monster Energy team did a great job, even though I almost took my cousin (Jackson) with me down pit road. We took two tires, and he had to jump off my hood, so I apologize to him for that ... but it was a super-cool day to advance. I appreciate my team for all their hard work.”

On the other side of the bracket sits the other Ty, Ty Dillon. Dillon entered this tournament as the lowest-seeded driver out of the 32 that made up the original field a month ago.

Upset after upset has kept his Cinderella run alive, besting drivers like Denny Hamlin (who was the No. 1 overall seed), Brad Keselowski, Alex Bowman, and most recently, 12th-seeded John Hunter Nemechek.

After moving Bowman on the last lap in round three at Sonoma (Calif.) Raceway, Dillon caught a late caution to receive the free pass at Dover, while Nemechek was trapped a lap down. That iced the matchup before the second and final overtime period.

Dillon hasn’t been in race-winning contention in any of the tournament races, but his thrilling battles over the past five weeks have kept him and his Matt Kaulig-owned team in the headlines.

“It feels good. You know, I have been the underdog for a long time now, just battling my way to try to get opportunity. Eventually you get comfortable in fighting from behind and people underestimating you,” said Dillon. “It’s hard to say that we lucked into it this far in, and I am proud of the way we have run. We haven’t been a dominating car, but we have been a pain to everyone around us. That is all we can do -- put pressure on them and execute at the right time and that is what we have done.

“I am so grateful to Matt Kaulig and everyone at Kaulig Racing -- Chris Rice, Ty Norris, my sponsors Sea Best and Grizzly Nicotine Pouches. They are the ones that allow us to do this and allow us to have fun,” he added. “I don’t take [getting to the bracket final] for granted. I have been out of this sport and gotten good perspective and have so much gratitude just to get to race these cars, so to be in the position we’re in now is a huge deal for us as a group.

?When things are coming together in a season like this, it’s not everything we want … and it hasn’t been everything, but we are having fun. When you can leave the racetrack smiling, you are already winning.”

Something else that would give Dillon and company something to smile about? Winning the million-dollar prize at iconic Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Notably, the 2.5-mile oval is the site of Dillon’s lone Xfinity Series win back in 2014.

IMS has played host to the biggest event in motorsports, the Indianapolis 500, for 109 years and has hosted NASCAR’s Brickyard 400 since 1994. Now, the Racing Capital of the World gets to feature not only the ‘400’, but the first-ever In-Season Tournament championship race all in one.

Coverage of the Brickyard 400 presented by PPG starts Sunday, June 27 at 2 p.m. ET on TNT, the IMS Radio Network, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, channel 90, with in-car cameras and scanner audio streaming exclusively on HBO Max.