Entertainment This Week

February 16 - 22, 2019 3 Austin Dillon looks forward to his 'chess match' at Daytona Austin Dillon will be the first to tell you that winning last year's Daytona 500 was the highlight of his season, if not his career. The trouble is, the 28-year-old North Carolina native and driver of the No. 3 Chevrolet for Richard Childress Racing couldn't maintain that level of success into the rest of the 2018 Monster Energy Cup season, ringing up only seven more top-10 finishes, one more top-five and no wins in the ensuing 35 races. Winning at Daytona got him to the postseason but he wasn't much of a factor there, getting eliminated in the Round of 16 to finish 13th in the final Cup standings. Now Dillon is rested, relaxed and smarter for his struggles as he and 39 other series drivers gear up for the 2019 Daytona 500, the Cup Series season-opener that airs from Daytona International Speedway Sunday, Feb. 17, on Fox. "It's a long race and you know guys are coming off of the winter break," explains Dillon, the grandson of team owner Richard Childress, "everybody's pumped up to go out there and compete hard. So people are being aggressive early on and you've got to be smart. "It's a chess match," he continues. "It's really like playing chess at 200 miles per hour. Daytona is one of those places that sometimes things can go outside of your control and you'll be caught up in something that you weren't really a part of. And you just have to have a little bit of luck but also put yourself in a smart position." In last year's race, Dillon benefited from a little of both. He managed to sidestep three massive wrecks that eliminated many of the strongest cars in the field to come from one lap back of the lead with 20 to go and wind up directly behind leader Aric Almirola. As Almirola tried to block him in the last lap of overtime, Dillon tagged his rear bumper and sent him spinning into the wall, thus enabling Dillon to speed past for the victory. And he did it in Dale Earnhardt's No. 3 Chevy, 20 years after Earnhardt's first and only victory in the 500 and 17 years to the day the NASCAR legend was killed in a last lap wreck on the North Florida tri-oval. "The No. 3 car has always been historically famous at Daytona," Dillon says, "and there's everything that Dale Earnhardt was able to accomplish. And when he won 20 years ago from when we won, it was really cool ... to go back to Victory Lane with the No. 3. There's so much history at Daytona and the No. 3 car has so much history, it was very special." "I mean, that's a championship race right there," he continues, "and not many races where they say afterwards 'champion.' So you know it's the Super Bowl of our sport and to cross the checkered flag, it just felt so good to bring it back to all of our employees at RCR and my grandfather, my family. It just felt good." Austin Dillon defends his championship in the 2019 Daytona 500 Sunday on Fox. BY GEORGE DICKIE Answers: 1) "St. Elsewhere" 2) David Hasselhoff 3) "The Six Million Dollar Man" 4) "Dragnet" 5) John Forsythe 6) "The Mod Squad" 7) "Get Smart" 8) Malcolm McDowell 9) Gary Cole 10) "The Fugitive" BY JAY BOBBIN Questions: 1) While he was providing the voice of KITT the car in "Knight Rider," William Daniels also played Dr. Mark Craig in what Emmy-winning medical drama? 2) Who played Michael Knight in the original 1982-86 series of the same title? 3) NBC's short-lived 2007 "Bionic Woman" series was a remake of a 1976-78 ABC series that was a spinoff of what ABC hit starring Lee Majors? 4) Ed O'Neill took over the role of Joe Friday in a 2003-04 ABC revamp of what classic cop drama from Jack Webb? 5) John Forsythe was the voice of unseen boss Charles "Charlie" Townsend in the 1976-81 ABC hit "Charlie's Angels," but who did Charlie's voice in the 2000 movie adaptation of the series? 6) Moviegoers didn't buy Claire Danes, Giovanni Ribisi and Omar Epps in a 1999 redo of what 1968-73 ABC hit about a trio of "hippie cops"? 7) Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway starred in a 2008 movie adaptation of what Emmy-winning 1965-70 comedy hit starring Don Adams and Barbara Feldon? 8) Who took over Ricardo Montalban's role as mysterious Mr. Roarke in ABC's 1998 remake of "Fantasy Island"? 9) Who did a pitch-perfect Robert Reed imitation in "The Brady Bunch Movie"? 10) Tim Daly played Dr. Richard Kimble in a 2000-01 CBS remake of what suspenseful 1963-67 drama series? William Daniels Deja view

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