Ty Dillon will have a new crew chief for the final two races of the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season, and his team, Kaulig Racing, offered no explanation for the sudden change.
“Kaulig Racing announced today that Technical Director Mike Cook will serve as interim Crew Chief for Ty Dillon’s No. 10 NASCAR Cup Series car for the final two races of the 2026 season, replacing Andrew Dickeson,” the team wrote in an online announcement Wednesday on X.
Cook takes over the No. 10 Chevrolet at Martinsville and Homestead-Miami. He joined Kaulig in December 2024 from Stewart-Haas Racing, where he was a lead engineer, Racer reported. Dickeson ran the No. 10 pit box for all of 2025 and returned to the role this year.
Ty Dillon’s 2026 Season Compared to His Career
Dillon has struggled mightily this season. After 34 races, the 34-year-old driver sits 33rd in the Cup Series standings with 374 points after 34 starts. He has no wins, no top-fives, no top-10s, two DNFs and only three laps led.
His best finishes this year were 12th at Nashville and 13th at Talladega in the spring, along with 14th in the Daytona 500. He placed 15th at Talladega on Oct. 25 and posted the third-fastest lap in that race. The rest of his results ran from the high 20s into the 30s.
His average finish stands at about 26.4. In 2025, his average was 24.6, and he finished 33rd with one top-10, an eighth at Atlanta. Dillon also reached the final of the inaugural In-Season Challenge that year before losing to Ty Gibbs.
Across his career, Dillon has more than 300 Cup starts without a win and about eight top-10s. His best points finishes came in 2017 and 2019, when he placed 24th with Germain Racing, and his best race result is third at Talladega in 2020.
Dillon is the son of former driver and Richard Childress Racing executive Mike Dillon, the younger brother of Austin Dillon and the grandson of Childress. He won the 2011 ARCA championship, took 2012 Truck Series Rookie of the Year honors and finished second in the 2013 Truck points. He moved to Cup full time in 2017 and has since driven for Germain Racing, Gaunt Brothers, Petty GMS and Spire before joining Kaulig full time in 2025.
Kaulig Racing’s Cup Program and the Dickeson Change
Kaulig’s own race reports describe incremental gains and strategy adjustments that have not produced consistent results. Teammate AJ Allmendinger, driver of the No. 16 Chevrolet, has clinched the head-to-head battle over Dillon and ranks higher in points with multiple top-10s.
Matt Kaulig, the founder of Leaf Home, started the team in 2016 in NASCAR’s second-tier series. Ross Chastain delivered its first win there in 2019, and the team eventually won 27 races in the series. It formed a technical alliance with Richard Childress Racing, and its shop sits on the RCR campus in Welcome, North Carolina.
Kaulig debuted in the Cup Series part-time in 2020. Allmendinger won the 2021 Indianapolis road course race for the team’s first Cup victory, and Kaulig bought charters and went full-time in 2022. It owns two Cup wins and fields five full-time Ram trucks this season after closing its second-tier program.
Dickeson, an Australian with an automotive engineering degree, moved to the United States around 2008 and worked in Supercars’ Super2 series, at Petty Enterprises and at Phoenix Racing. He then spent years as an engineer at Richard Childress Racing. Kaulig named him Dillon’s crew chief in December 2024, his first full-time Cup crew chief job.
“Andrew has the demeanor and stability that I think will give Ty the best opportunity he has ever had at the Cup level,” Cook said, according to Racer.
Kaulig has not described a specific issue with Dickeson, and no dispute or incident involving him has been reported. The No. 10 team’s results did not improve on its 2025 totals, and the car has not produced a top-10 finish this year.
Kaulig CEO Chris Rice said in July that the team had not discussed Dillon’s 2027 future.
Cook, the former Stewart-Haas engineer, will now handle the Martinsville and Homestead-Miami races with Dillon. The 2027 plans for both the driver and the crew chief remain unsettled.
Struggling NASCAR Driver Makes Sudden Crew Change Before Martinsville Race