Fourth In Austin Helps Hill Extend Xfinity Points Lead

Austin Hill in action at Circuit of the Americas. (HHP/Jim Fluharty photo)

AUSTIN, Texas – Austin Hill played the pit strategy game to near perfection during Saturday’s Focused Health 250 at Circuit of the Americas, grabbing a strong top-five finish for Richard Childress Racing.

Coming off a win at last weekend’s NASCAR Xfinity Series contest at Atlanta (Ga.) Motor Speedway, the Georgia native parlayed his pit strategy into a fourth-place run, expanding his points lead after three races.

Sixth in the opening stage provided Hill with five bonus points, while the second stage was used to play strategy and gain track position.

Rather than stay out and collect another couple of bonus points, Hill elected to “flip” the second stage, pitting early and giving him the preferred track position ahead of the final segment.

There, he took advantage of a huge dive into turn one by eventual race winner Connor Zilisch, catapulting from fifth to the lead in one corner with his No. 21 Chevrolet.

Hill led for six laps before Kvapil and Zilisch passed him at turn 13, bleeding a bit of track position before ultimately ending the day just off the podium, behind third-finishing Sam Mayer.

“Our Global Industrial Chevrolet was a fifth to eighth-place car, and we ended up fourth,” Hill said. “It was a solid day for us, but we have to go back to work and figure out what we need to do better. We’ve been so close so many times during these road course races, but we always seem to come up short at the end.”

In four races at Circuit of the Americas, Hill has scored three top-five finishes, including a pair of runner-up results in 2022 and 2024.

“When I was leading the race, I started to mess with the brake bias, because our car was getting tight in the slower sections. Ultimately, that’s what cost us on the wheel hop,” lamented Hill of his late-race fade. The No. 88 (Zilisch) and No. 1 (Kvapil) were still going to get to us, because overall both of their cars were better than we were today.

“We blistered our tires really bad in stage one but were able to fix the issue in stage two. In return, we were sideways through the corner,” Hill continued. “We went back on adjustments on the last stop of the race. Once (Zilisch) and (Kvapil) got by in the closing laps though, I knew we were in trouble, because it felt like the tires were blistering again.

“The feeling felt just like it did in stage one. At that point, we had to nurse the car home. It was probably 60% me and 40% car that need to be better. We can go toe to toe with these road course ringers. We’ve shown it time and time again that we can run inside the top three or top five.

“It’s a very frustrating fourth-place finish for our No. 21 team, but we will keep building.”

The Richard Childress Racing driver exits Austin maintaining the points lead over fellow RCR driver Jesse Love by 13 points heading into round four of the NASCAR Xfinity Series season at Phoenix (Ariz.) Raceway.

Coverage of the GOVX 200 begins Saturday, March 8 at 5 p.m. on The CW, the Motor Racing Network, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, channel 90.