DARLINGTON, S.C.: With weather looming in the distance and a championship run on the horizon, Austin Hill knew he needed a good run and contend for his third career NASCAR Xfinity Series win in Saturday’s Sports Clips Haircuts VFW Help a Hero 200 at Darlington (S.C.) Raceway.
He didn’t disappoint.
The Winston, GA. native started the first stage in the fourth position and in a relatively uneventful stage, he remained in the top-10.
Finishing Stage 1 in seventh, the driver of the No. 21 Bennett Transportation & Logistics Chevrolet would inform the team that he needed rear grip on both ends of the track. Hill stated that he cannot be aggressive with spinning the wheels so he would come to the pits for tires, fuel and an air adjustment.
Picking up two positions on pit road, Hill launched into Stage 2 from fifth, however, Mother Nature quickly rolled into the historic race track and bring out the red flag on Lap 64 as rain soaked the 1.366-mile track.
After nearly a two-hour and 40-minute rain delay, the race would resume on Lap 78 with Hill secured in eighth. An excellent restart propelled Hill to fifth where he would finish Stage 2 after the yellow flew one lap shy of the stage end after JJ Yeley’s car caught fire at the exit of Turn 3.
”Before the rain delay, we were fighting a loose balance on our Bennett Transportation & Logistics Chevrolet,” offered Hill. “We talked during the delay about what we were going to do to make it better. I felt like it fired off better when we restarted and we worked our way up to the top-five but as the run went along, we again started losing rear grip”
Pitting between stage 2 and 3 gave Hill an advantage as his pit crew performed a perfect pit stop and got him off pit road first and would lead the field back to green.
In control of the lead on the restart, Hill did his best but was unable to fight off the challenge of Justin Allgaier. Richard Childress Racing teammate Sheldon Creed wasn’t far behind.
Struggling with an extremely loose race car, Hill would continue to fall backwards By the time the caution flag came out on Lap 128 for the Brandon Jones spin, Hill had fallen to seventh.
Telling his team that he was too loose and that he needed a big adjustment the team told him that he would have about 15 laps to go to finish the race.
Hill responded informing the team to give him back half of what they took away at the last adjustment.
Going back to green on Lap 134, Hill would control sixth but over the final 13 laps of the race, the handling continued to be a challenge for the impressive rookie dropping him to 10th at the checkered flag after a wild race for the finish between Creed, Noah Gragson and Kyle Larson.
Hill would collect his 15th top-10 finish of the year with his Too Tough To Tame efforts.
“Our biggest issue all night was in Turns 3 and 4,” Hill explained after the race. “When I tried to run the bottom, it would bog down too much. I’d spin the tires really easy when I tried to put the throttle down and I felt like I was burning the right rear off of it.
“We made it a little better at the start of that last restart there with 15 to go but we started losing rear grip again. We ran top-five for most of the day but it’s a little frustrating to finish 10th.”
With just two races remaining in the regular season, he said his Richard Childress Racing team would go back to the drawing board to make sure his No. 21 team would be much better when the Playoffs kick off later this month at Texas Motor Speedway.
“We’re going to go back to the drawing board and keep working on it and try to be better once the Playoffs start,” added Hill. “We’ll just keep working at it.”
Currently sixth in the NASCAR Xfinity points, Austin Hill and the rest of the tour head to Kansas Speedway for the Kansas Lottery 300 on Sept 10th at 3:00 p.m. ET.
Follow Grace Krenrich on Twitter @grace3140.
