Ricky Stenhouse already has his Sprint Cup ride for next year. He'll be in the No. 6 Toyota for Roush Fenway.
Austin Dillon doesn't have anything set up. At least nothing has been announced.
But he can't be far behind.
Especially if he wins another championship.
Last year, he won the NASCAR truck series title. This year, he's second in the Nationwide series, three points off the lead.
Dillon, like Stenhouse, is a 20-something who looks like a big part of the future of Sprint Cup racing.
"I think we're sitting in a great spot right now," Dillon said in a conference call this week. "As a rookie team, we have accomplished so much this year. Anything from this point on is just going to be a bonus.
"But we don't look at it that way. We look at it as, we want to win a championship. We don't take just top-10s. … We want to be in the top three, and we want to compete with the Cup guys who come in."
Dillon, 22, will compete with Cup drivers down the line.
But for now, to win the Nationwide title, he has to compete with his Richard Childress Racing stablemate, Elliott Sadler, who has 430 Cup starts and 181 Nationwide starts.
And they have NASCAR's spotlight this weekend, racing Sunday at Chicagoland Speedway as Sprint Cup takes its final idle week of the year.
So Dillon, Childress' grandson, wants to race Sadler. He has to master ways of defeating a veteran.
"Well, you know, we are a team here at RCR, and we have been working together, sharing information, just like we have from the start," Dillon said. "We are helping each other. There's not a big ego over there trying to re-create something."
NHRA: Spencer Massey led Top Fuel at 3.914 seconds, 318.02 mph on the first day of qualifying at the Mile High Nationals in Denver. Jack Beckman (Funny Car), Allen Johnson (Pro Stock) and Hector Arana Jr. (Pro Stock Motorcycle) also led their classes.
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