KANSAS CITY, Kan.—Austin Hill won the regular season Xfinity Series title at Kansas Speedway on Saturday.
With his fifth-place result, Hill held a five-point advantage over Kansas Lottery race winner John Hunter Nemechek.
After starting ninth with an ill-handling car, Hill battled through the field to salvage a series’ best 15th top five. For the No. 21 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet, it was certainly a character-building day.
“It was really good for everybody at RCR and ECR (Earnhardt-Childress Racing Engines),” said Hill. “I struggled really bad today with our Bennett Chevrolet. So we had to fight for that one. We really showed that having tough days like today just shows that we can be a championship-caliber team.”
That was just the battle. To win the war, the 29-year-old driver from Winston, Georgia, realizes his team will have to take it up a notch. Nemechek swept both stage wins and secured his sixth victory of the season to score 60 points—a perfect race.
After the driver standings were re-seeded, Hill sits second, 10 points behind Nemechek.
“We really had to dig deep for it because we struggled with the handling of the car,” Hill said. “It was tight to start and got really free. I was free and sliding the fronts (tires) and we were all over the place. But everybody dug deep at RCR and ECR. Just happy that we were able to bring home the regular season championship–get the extra 15 bonus points–which is huge.
“But we got to go to work. We got to be better. The 20 (Nemechek) was the class of the field all day. Really kind of stunk up the show there, so we’ve got to go back to the drawing board, figure out what we’ve got to do better for next time.”
While some drivers have yet to announce their plans for 2024, RCR locked in Hill last month to a multi-year deal. Removing the distraction early has enabled the team to concentrate on the task at hand—winning the 2023 Xfinity Series championship.
“There’s a lot of confidence,” Hill said. “We’re just trying to build this program at RCR and trying to find things that I like. The team bond that we all have has come a long way. My future looks really good right now. And I’m really excited about my future to come.
“But the work begins next week. We got to dig deep. We’ve got to get better. We struggled today, didn’t really have a 5th place car. We just were able to salvage it. But going into Bristol we have to have everything–all of our ducks in a row and just be prepared and not have to dig ourselves out of a hole like we had today.”
Still, with a podium finish in his first start at Bristol Motor Speedway, Hill is ready to get the Playoff party started.
“Last year, man, were really, really good at Bristol,” Hill said. “We ended up finishing third. We had a shot at winning. I ended up getting some left front damage; that kind of hurt the balance of the car a little bit, which is crazy to say for Bristol. But I lost a little bit of downforce and it made me really lose. I think we still finished third and we came home with the top five.
“So, I feel really good about going there. We just got to be ready come Friday night. It’s going to be tough. There’s a lot of fast guys in this series, really good fast drivers. So we got to be ready, we got to run top five in all the stages and try to get a win to go to the next round.”
Follow Lee Spencer on Twitter @CandiceSpencer or email her at: [email protected].
