Austin Dillon celebrated his Daytona 500 win with his team with tattoos and Tex-Mex.
A restaurant across the street from Daytona International Speedway opened its doors after hours Sunday night for Dillon and his No. 3 Richard Childress Racing team to gather and rejoice over their win a few hours earlier. Dillon arrived still in his driver’s uniform.
The celebration moved on to a tattoo parlor where Dillon and other members of his team added body art.
Dillon’s tattoo said Daytona 500 champion on it. He had the artist design it off the winner’s hat he received.
So where is the tattoo?
“You’ll never be able to see it,’’ Dillon said. “It’s a pretty cool looking tattoo. (Wife) Whitney is probably the only one who is going to see it for a while.
“A lot of the guys got tattoos last night. Everybody was lined up. It was cool.’’
It just made Monday morning a bit painful.
“It hurts,’’ Dillon said. “It feels OK this morning. One of the boys smacked me on the butt when I came over this morning. (I was like) easy guys.’’
Tattoos have provided a bond for Dillon and friends. Three years ago, Dillon and friends went to Daytona during a break in the season to relax. The last night there, they decided to get a tattoo. The plan was for each member to draw a tattoo and they would put each in a hat. Whatever one picked would be their tattoo.
Dillon’s father, Mike, interceded.
“He said if you’re going to get something, you need to all get the same thing,’’ Dillon said. “That’s when we came up with the wolf howling at the moon.’’
They were a wolfpack.
But there was another issue.
Some people wanted to put a No. 3 in the image. Not everyone was in agreement.
A suggestion was made to put a Roman numeral 3 — III.
“It put our own little spin on the 3,’’ Dillon said. “It looks cool.’’
