Austin Hill Q&A

BY JOSEPH WOLKIN

Austin Hill joined Richard Childress Racing with high expectations, as the Georgia native knows what he’s doing behind the wheel of a race car.

From humble beginnings with Young’s Motorsports in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series to competing for wins week-in and week-out with Hattori Racing Enterprises, Hill became known as a racer who gets the most out of his equipment.

Now, he’s competing for the NASCAR Xfinity Series championship with Richard Childress Racing in the famed No. 21 car. Hill started the season with a triumph at Daytona International Speedway, and he’s been racing near the front of the pack ever since.

The high expectations, though, are nothing new for Hill. When he joined HRE in the Truck Series, he knew it would be a pressure-packed situation, with a team that had just won a championship.

The same can be said about RCR, which is accustomed to dominating in the Xfinity Series. And most of all, Hill is having fun. He’s enjoying life with the No. 21 team, and he’s ready to see how far he can go in the playoffs.

It’s been one of those things where going from trucks to Xfinity, there’s a lot more stuff going on. I’m a lot busier. It’s nice to stay in the seat a lot more often. On the truck side, you’d be off two to three weeks at a time. It makes your weekends a little different.

Adjusting to RCR has been really easy. Everybody at RCR is great, and we get along really well. It seems like we’ve known each other for a long time. Working with Andy Street, my crew chief, they’ve been bringing stuff to the race track that suits my driving style.

When I raced at Hattori Racing Enterprises, it was just a small team with maybe 15 people in the whole shop. At RCR, there’s 350 employees. It’s a really big jump, but it’s been an easy transition.

It seems like on the Xfinity side, there’s less downforce and side force. The Xfinity car actually fits my driving style better than the truck did because the trucks have a lot of on-throttle time. The engine package is different, and in the trucks, you don’t have the wheelspin as much.

I’ve gotten very used to being aggressive on the throttle, trying to keep the momentum up. You do it differently on the Xfinity side, being off throttle more and dragging more brakes. When you put the throttle down, especially at a short track, it’s easier to spin the tires off the corners. The transition hasn’t been that bad for me, just because I think the Xfinity cars fit my driving style better.

United Rentals, we’ve worked together for a lot of years, even back in the NASCAR K&N days. They were helping out. They weren’t on the car, but they’d help out here and there. They’ve been a great company to work with and great to get along with. I’ve gotten to know a lot of the people at United Rentals, doing some different things with them. For United Rentals to help me out in my career as long as they have says a lot. It’s hard to find sponsorship and to keep sponsors, so to have a sponsor like United Rentals for so many years says a lot.

It meant a lot. Daytona is not an easy place to win at. Things have to work out just the right way. It’s very mentally draining because you’re trying to position yourself in the right spot for the end of the race. All of the right things need to happen. I’ve been very fortunate to win at the truck level. Going into Daytona, I’ve always had a ton of confidence, but the right things happened with the right circumstances.

I knew I had to be aggressive and that’s one of the races that you have to be smart, but also aggressive with your moves. You have to be very methodical. I think starting the year off like we did and now we don’t have to worry about making the playoffs is great, but we definitely want more. We need to be a little more consistent as a group. Our bad days need to be in the top 10 and our good days need to be in the top five.