| Welcome, NC (April 26, 2020) – Last week at virtual Richmond Raceway, Ty Dillon and the GEICO team turned in a top-15 finish. This week, the virtual Germain Racing team journeyed to Talladega Superspeedway for the GEICO 70 eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series race. GEICO’s marquis event, Dillon planned to put on a show… and that’s exactly what he did.
Dillon spent race week participating in a full schedule of interviews and also appeared in several videos. Most notable was a video interview he did with GEICO’s Pikes Peak International Hill Climb driver and three-time winner, Layne Schranz, who chatted with Dillon live from the GEICO Restart Zone at Talladega Superspeedway. The interview, now on YouTube, was a deep-dive into both of their careers and the differences between driving at a high-rate of speed up a mountain and racing at over 200-mph on the high-banks of Talladega. Race day featured Dillon on Instagram Live in a virtual pre-race appearance, where he answered questions from race fans and talked about the GEICO 70. Save for a tough day at Bristol, Dillon has experienced consistent success since the Pro Invitational Series got underway a month ago. The trend continued at virtual Talladega on Sunday. Dillon and the No. 13 GEICO Camaro ZL1 1LE qualified 6th for the GEICO 70 and looked to improve on their position when the race got underway. When the green flag flew from the virtual flag stand, Dillon and the GEICO Camaro immediately broke into the top-five and set sail for the lead. He quickly took command of the race and led the bulk of the opening 10-laps. As it does in a normal NASCAR Cup Series race, the draft would ebb and flow and Dillon would lead the race on a few different occasions, but he made the top-five his home, departing only for a couple of pit stops. Even then, the crafty veteran quickly returned to the top-five and ultimately had the No. 13 GEICO Camaro back atop the scoring tower as the leader of the race. As the laps wound down, business picked up and a crash brought out the yellow flag with just three-laps remaining in the advertised distance, sending the race into overtime. As the field prepared for a green-white-checkered finish, Dillon took the green flag from the front row, on the outside line, in second place. On the final lap, Dillon and the GEICO Camaro charged to the lead and began to break away before Corey Lajoie bumped Dillon from behind just before the finish line in an attempt to collect the win. Dillon spun and Lajoie gained the position, but Alex Bowman beat him to the line by inches in exciting Talladega fashion. “The ending happened quick, that’s for sure. I thought we had a chance at winning the race,” Dillon said. “If only they had moved that start-finish line back to its normal place, I think I might have had a better shot. I knew we still had a lot of track left to go in the tri-oval and Corey Lajoie was giving me a little bit of a bump. And, iRacing is just like in real life, when you get a bump, you have to correct it with the steering. When he did that, he got a little bit inside of me to take the line away. I didn’t have a spotter and the mirrors didn’t line up as well as real life, so I figured I would chop back down to see if I could make it happen. It didn’t work and I ended up in the grass. Then I put it in reverse to try and finish in reverse, like back in the day, but I got hit and started flipping, ended up on my roof and slid across the finish line in classic Carl Edwards-Brad Keselowski style.” Dillon continued, “It was fun though. We got to lead a lot of laps in the GEICO 70, which was really cool. My goal was to go put on a good race and put our GEICO Camaro up front as much as possible. I don’t know how many laps we led, but we led a bunch of them. That was definitely the most fun I’ve had on iRacing yet. That track and drafting was very realistic. I was very nervous the whole time, just because you can’t tell your whole surroundings like you can in a real car and you don’t really want to be the guy who wrecks the whole field. Overall, I think we put on a good show though. It was definitely the most fun and entertaining race yet.” The Germain Racing team and the eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series will now take on the virtual Monster Mile. Ty Dillon and the No. 13 GEICO Camaro ZL1 1LE will hit the track at virtual Dover International Speedway for the eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series race on Sunday, May 3rd. The race will be televised live on FOX, FS1 and the FOX Sports App beginning at 1 PM (ET). Please visit www.GEICO.com to learn how you could save money on more than just auto insurance. Twitter: @GEICORacing | @GermainRacing Instagram: @OfficialGEICORacing | @Germain_Racing |