Justin Alexander Back in the Pits

On April 2nd, it was reported by Bob Pockrass and Jordan Bianchi that Justin Alexander will be stepping back on top of the pit box for Austin Dillon, replacing Keith Rodden. Rodden will be taking a more organizational role, the same thing was said when Alexander first stepped back from being a crew chief in 2022. 

This will be Justin Alexander’s third stint as Austin Dillon’s crew chief in the Cup Series. The first being 2017-2018 where Austin Dillon won the Coke 600 and Daytona 500 along with finishing in the top 13 in points both seasons. Alexander came back to serve in 2020 until 2022. In this time Dillon won two more races and finished 11th in points in 2020 and 2022 while barely missing out on the playoffs in 2021. 2022 was Dillon’s career best year with one win, five top-5’s, and 11 top-10’s. 

Each year that Austin Dillon has had a different crew chief atop the pit box, there is an extremely noticeable dropoff in performance. In 2019 when paired with Danny Stockman Jr. and having a rookie Daniel Hemric as a teammate, Dillon had put up his worst season to then. He didn’t score a single top-5 and had just 6 top-10’s finishing 21st in points, something he had only done in his sophomore season until then.

In 2023, Keith Rodden took over for Alexander and once again, Dillon’s performance drastically dropped off from the season prior. While early on there was a lot of bad luck with getting wrapped up in incidents he didn’t cause or mechanical failures, the season never turned around for him. The best moment of the season was Dillon looking like he was going to win the Chicago Street race before going to hard into the corner and crashing into the tire barriers. Other than this Dillon scored just one top-5 and seven top-10’s with an average finish of 21.8, the worst since he’s been full time in the Cup Series. Dillon also put up his worst finish in the points of his career, finishing in 27th. So far the 2024 season doesn’t seem to be much different either. Dillon has been consistently off the pace with an average finish of 25.7 so far and sitting 28th in the points.

The decision to pair Justin Alexander with Austin Dillon always seems to work out. Call it synergy or call it magic, but these two clearly have something that makes them better. There is an expectation that reconnecting them will greatly improve Dillon’s performance on the track while many clamor for Dillon to get out of the race car and prepare to take over the RCR team. However, I think that Dillon is a talented and consistent driver that just hasn’t been in the greatest situation his entire career, but still has made some lemonade with those lemons. Because of that, I think Dillon could end up winning another race this year because he has his “Chad Knaus” back.