On Saturday, Austin Hill secured the best starting spot among the four NASCAR Xfinity Series Championship 4 contenders for the Championship Race at Phoenix Raceway. Hill will roll from the starting grid in the fifth position, and while a good starting position doesn’t guarantee success, it certainly doesn’t hurt.
Hill will begin the race with a track position advantage over his competition as he attempts to secure his first career NASCAR Xfinity Series Championship.
Heading into the race, Hill, 30, has to be the most underestimated driver in NASCAR National Series history. With 18 wins combined in the NASCAR Xfinity Series, and NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, Hill has fought detractors since day one.
When Hattori Racing Enterprises announced Hill as the driver of the team’s No. 16 entry in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series in 2019, there was an incredible level of uproar on social media. The public ridicule that Hill received on what should have been — to that point — the biggest announcement of his racing career, fueled the native of Winston, Georgia in 2019, and it continues to fuel him as he heads into Saturday’s NASCAR Xfinity Series Championship Race with a chance at the title.
“Yeah, I love proving people wrong. So, anytime I can prove someone wrong it just kind of puts a smile on my face,” the Richard Childress Racing driver said in Thursday’s Championship 4 Media Day. “It’s been one of those things that, yeah, there was a lot of doubt in me, but I knew that everything I’ve done in my career up to that point, it wasn’t just from luck. It wasn’t just from anything else other than just hard work and dedication. I felt like I deserved the opportunity just as much as anyone else does. And so, I tried to put that opportunity to the best of my ability and was able to win four races that year and kind of shut a lot of people up a little bit. And been able to do that ever since.
“You know, it seems like every year, we go into a new season, there’s a lot of people who doubt me. But we’re here this weekend for a reason. We can win a Championship just as good as any of these three guys can, so we’re going to make the most of it.”
Hill enters Saturday’s race hopeful about his chance to hoist the NASCAR Xfinity Series Championship. Despite Phoenix not being one of his strongest tracks statistically, Hill has seen great improvement at the 1-mile oval in recent years.
“Phoenix has not been the greatest to me over the years, maybe my driving style or the way I approach the racetrack. I definitely think that RCR, and myself have gotten better on the short tracks and a place like Phoenix, we’ve gotten a lot better,” Hill noted. “So, I have a lot more confidence going into this weekend than maybe I would have had last year, even though last year we ended up being very good here.”
Whether he wins the championship or not, Hill just wants to see a hard, yet respected battle play out with all of the Championship 4 contenders. Hill feels like while all four of the Championship 4 drivers are among the most aggressive in the NASCAR Xfinity Series garage, but he feels they all have found a way to race each other with tons of respect.
“I think us four, I don’t fear any of the three championship guys. I think that we are all very aggressive, but we all race with good respect between one another,” Hill said. “I think all four of us have respect within the group that’s going up for the Championship. It’s just some of the other guys, all they’re caring about is the win, right? I just hope some of the respect was shown throughout the season and stuff with each other with some of the other competitors that aren’t in the Championship 4.”
Behind Hill in fifth, fellow Championship 4 competitors Cole Custer, AJ Allmendinger, and Justin Allgaier will start seventh, ninth, and 37th.
