NASCAR Season Review: Austin Dillon

Austin Dillon entered his third full-time season in NASCAR's premier series with two top-fives and nine top-10s to his young name. During his impressive junior year in the big leagues, Dillon more than doubled his top-10 total, earning 13 top-10 finishes with four of those landing in the top five.

While Dillon wasn't able to notch his first premier series win in 2016, he did earn two XFINITY Series victories. The first came in March at Auto Club Speedway, when he infamously "dabbed" following his last-lap pass for the win after Kyle Busch and Daniel Suarez's fuel cells dwindled. The second win came at Bristol in August, when he led four laps en route to his eighth XFINITY Series victory.

One of Dillon's most notable races of the season came in May's GEICO 500 at Talladega Superspeedway. After starting the race second, Dillon drove his No. 3 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet to a third-place result, the best finish of his premier series career.

So much for an off weekend: Dillon certainly kept busy in series' final in-season off weekend when he proposed to girlfriend and former NFL cheerleader Whitney Ward during a vacation to the Bahamas. Dillon tweeted out a photo of the engagement on Aug. 10 with the caption "That's gold."

Backed by his consistency in the regular season, Dillon made NASCAR's 16-team Chase for the first time in his career. Dillon, who would finish 14th in the final premier series standings, never dropped below 14th in the standings for the entire season.

As the field dwindled from 16 to 12 drivers, Dillon came on strong and squeezed into the Round of 12. An eighth-place showing at the elimination race at Dover allowed the RCR driver to advance past Tony Stewart, Jamie McMurray, Kyle Larson and Chris Buescher. Dillon didn't advance to the Round of 8 based on losing a tiebreaker to Denny Hamlin.

Dillon's two premier series poles in 2016 surpassed his entire career total, as he had only earned one (2014 at Daytona) prior to this season. The 26-year-old posted a 188.482 mph lap to notch the top position at Auto Club Speedway in March, powering his No. 3 Chevrolet 192.301 mph lap to earn his second at Texas Motor Speedway shortly after he was eliminated from the Chase. The Texas race also sparked some tensions between Dillon and former RCR driver Kevin Harvick.

Info taken from NASCAR.com.