Austin Hill wins home race in Atlanta

Austin Hill hails from Winston, Georgia, which is located approximately fifty-five miles from Atlanta Motor Speedway in Hampton. After nearly winning at his home track in March, Hill completed the effort in Saturday’s NASCAR Xfinity Series action as he dominated the final stage and beat back Josh Berry for his second win of the season.

Hill and Richard Childress Racing team-mate Sheldon Creed enjoyed a strong outing as they finished 1–2 in Stage #2, though the latter subsequently fell out of the top ten. Meanwhile, Hill took the lead on lap 101 and save for some threats from the likes of Berry and Ryan Truex was virtually unstoppable as he led a race-high total of seventy-three laps.

Some fans and other figures took issue with Hill’s last-stage dominance and an otherwise unremarkable race on a reconfigured track intended for superspeedway-style racing, which they partly attribute to the Xfinity package which was simply the standard intermediate oval aerodynamic setup with superspeedway engine regulations. By comparison, the Cup Series‘ Atlanta package was the standard one used for superspeedways.

Anthony Alfredo, who finished fourteenth, tweeted during Sunday’s Cup race that it “has had a lot more side-by-side ‘pack racing’ than the Xfinity race. It’s most likely because they run their full speedway package. Xfinity is just the traditional intermediate aero package, but with the superspeedway motor package. Handling is still important tho.”

Regardless of circumstances that may have helped him, both of Hill’s Xfinity wins have come on superspeedways (or similar as Atlanta is still 1.5 miles in length) with Saturday and the Daytona season opener in February, establishing himself as one of the top drivers at such tracks. He was also the favourite at Talladega Superspeedway in April before a late crash, while his maiden Camping World Truck Series victory came at Daytona in 2019.

“What a car,” said Hill. “RCR has been working their ever-loving tails off to give me a car that will race really fast.”

On the other hand, Ty Gibbs entered Atlanta as the defending winner and with a nine-point margin separating him and championship leader A.J. Allmendinger, but left twenty points back after a lap 93 wreck while racing fellow Monster Energy driver Riley Herbst.

“We had a good car and the #98 just slid up and wasn’t clear and hooked us in the left front and got me in the wall,” said Gibbs. “Just hard racing and came out on the bad side of it. Luckily, happy to walk out of this place on my feet. It’s disappointing, but you can’t really control speedway racing.”

Race results