Austin Dillon will have a new crew chief at the Coca-Cola 600
Richard Childress Racing is changing crew chiefs again.
The team announced Monday that Slugger Labbe would no longer be the crew chief for Austin Dillon and would be replaced by Justin Alexander.
Dillon is currently 22nd in the points through the first 11 races of the season and has just one top-10 finish. He had a power issue that caused a late caution at Atlanta (and, ultimately, Kevin Harvick a win) and didn’t even take the green flag at Texas because there was a problem with the car.
Labbe missed the race at Richmond as the team said he stayed at the shop to work on the team’s Talladega car. The team failed inspection the week before at Bristol on five occasions and Dillon had to miss 30 minutes of practice time.
Alexander comes from the Xfinity Series where he was serving as the No. 2 team’s crew chief for RCR. Before his Xfinity stint, Alexander was the crew chief for Paul Menard. He was taken off Menard’s pit box after the August Bristol race in 2016 and replaced by Danny Stockman Jr.
Menard’s current crew chief is Matt Borland.
Alexander is Dillon’s third crew chief in three-plus seasons in the Cup Series for Richard Childress Racing. He started his full-time career in 2014 with Gil Martin as his crew chief and Martin was replaced by Labbe in the summer of 2015.
RCR said Alexander’s replacement in the Xfinity Series would be Randall Burnett, who was AJ Allmendinger’s crew chief to begin the season. Allmendinger’s JTG-Daugherty team replaced Burnett with Ernie Cope before the All-Star Race.
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of Dr. Saturday and From the Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
