DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — After a violent last-lap wreck and a long wait near the pit entrance, it was Austin Hill who came away with the win in Saturday’s NASCAR Xfinity Series opener at Daytona Int’l Speedway.
Hill was declared the winner after NASCAR took roughly five minutes to review footage of the last lap. It saw Hill, Justin Allgaier and John Hunter Nemechek jockey for the lead as Sam Mayer wrecked behind them, flipping on his roof.
Mayer’s incident was initiated after contact with Allgaier as they exited Turn 2.
“When I chose the outside line (before the last green flag), I didn’t feel like the inside line was that great,” Hill said on the frontstretch after the race. “When I saw (Mayer) and (Allgaier) get together, I said, ‘You can’t lift. It’s the last lap.’ As soon as the caution light came on, I thought I had it, but it was so close.”
The win is the third of Hill’s Xfinity Series career.
All three have come on a superspeedway-style track — two at Daytona and one at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
The Richard Childress Racing driver and the defending race winner took the win after he technically started from the pole. But during the pre-race pace laps, Hill had to pit fix a radio problem and restarted at the rear. Hill marched through the field and took the lead for the first time on lap 27. He would finish with a race-high 39 laps led.
Behind Hill, Nemechek was scored in second and Allgaier in third. The top five was completed by Parker Retzlaff and Myatt Snider.
Allgaier was in the lead at the white flag, but he was too far ahead of the field. That allowed Mayer to get a run on him. As they exited Turn 2, Allgaier attempted to block him and squeezed him into the wall, triggering the wreck.
“It’s so hard to want to back yourself up when you are the leader,” Allgaier said. “I knew that if I lifted I was gonna get swallowed up. I just didn’t think that was the right choice.”
Nemechek scored the runner-up finish in his first start as a full-time driver for Joe Gibbs Racing.
“I mean either way, it’s a good run right?” Nemechek said. “To come out of Daytona with a top three, with how many cars are normally wrecked here and the carnage that goes on, I feel really good about coming home with a clean car.”
The final result was somewhat surprising, after JR Motorsports led 67 of 125 laps and held the four spots behind Hill for most of the race’s final run. But in the final laps, Brandon Jones was hooked from behind by teammate Josh Berry, sending Jones sliding through in the backstretch grass.
During the resulting caution, Berry ran out of gas. Then the last-lap chaos removed Mayer and Allgaier from the equation.
FIRST STAGE RECAP
After Hill’s pre-green flag problems, Cole Custer assumed on spot on the front row and led the first lap. Allgaier would quickly take the point, leading over John Hunter Nemechek on lap 2. By lap 4, a portion of the lead pack was already three wide.
With his radio problems solved, Hill was in 13th by lap 5. The night’s first caution came when Bayley Currey’s No. 4 car started smoking and dropped fluids on the track. By then, Hill was in eighth. The race went green again on lap 11 as Nemechek took the lead and Hill moved into third.
On lap 20, the first wreck occurred when the No. 07 of Blaine Perkins and No. 11 of Daniel Hemric got together off Turn 4. Perkins slid nose first into the inside wall, while Hemric had his right-front fender tore off. Both drivers were eliminated from the race.
Perkins was initially hooked on the left-rear by Mayer.
A bump from behind turns into a rough day for Blaine Perkins & Daniel Hemric who are now our of the race.#XfinitySeries pic.twitter.com/hxfLtHvVCu
— Xfinity Racing (@XfinityRacing) February 18, 2023
Under the caution, race leader Allgaier elected to stay out of the pits. The race resumed with five laps left in the stage.
A lap later Hill officially made it back to his original starting spot.
On the last lap of the stage, Hill barely avoided a wreck while trying to block Allgaier and Chandler Smith in Turn 4, and held on to beat them for the stage win. In the pits, Allgaier was first off pit road over Smith and Hill. Meanwhile, Sheldon Creed and Parker Kligerman stayed out.
SECOND STAGE RECAP
Lap 40 saw another multi-car incident.
While running up front through the tri-oval, Sheldon Creed received a poorly times bump from Parker Kligerman. This caused Creed to fishtail to his left, bouncing him off teammate Hill and then sending his No. 2 Chevy nose first into the outside wall.
Behind him, Allgaier attempted to checkup and spun in the process. Stefan Parson was also collected.
Creed’s team attempted repairs, but Creed was ultimately eliminated.
Allgaier’s team had to make minor body repairs to his No. 7 Chevy and by lap 54 he was battling Hill and Mayer for the lead. With two laps left, all four JR Motorsports car were lined up in the outside lane.
Allgaier held the lead with one lap to go and he’d hold on to win the sage over Mayer. Moments after the field crossed the line JGR’s Sammy Smith spun from contact. Allgaier led Mayer, Jones and Berry off pit road under caution. The race resumed with 54 laps left.