Eight years after making his NASCAR debut, Austin Hill finally got his opening shot at the NASCAR Cup Series two weeks ago Michigan International Speedway.
At 28-years-old, Hill called his first laps in a Cup Series Next Gen car “breathtaking,” both in the good and bad sense of the word.
“I held my breath a lot the first couple of laps, to say the least,” Hill said a few hours after his first Cup practice session. “It’s weird. It’s definitely weird. That’s the best way I could put it.”
Just over 24 hours later, driving the No. 33 Chevrolet, the Richard Childress Racing driver would finish 18th in his first Cup start.
What surprised the full-time Xfinity Series driver about his first foray into NASCAR’s premier series?
He’d thought the race would feel longer.
“It seemed like the race ended fairly quickly,” Hill told SPEED SPORT two weeks after the Michigan race. “I don’t know how long the race ended up being (2 hours and 54 minutes), I was thinking it was gonna be like a four-hour ordeal. So I was trying to be as prepared for it as I could, I was trying to be as prepared for it as I could, you know, (with) running the Xfinity race the day before, had to do a lot of rehydrating and getting ready for it.
“And I felt like I was prepared really well. Throughout the race, I started off just kind of just trying to figure the car out, figure out where the tire limit was. You’ve seen time and time again, all the guys in the Cup Series for the most part have had issues with where they get loose, and then they kind of overcorrect. And it’s very easy to overcorrect those cars and you kind of get on the left (tire) here. And next thing you know, you end up in the fence. So I was trying to not do that. My number one goal going into the weekend was to finish all the laps. And we accomplished that.”
In addition to placing in the top 20 in his first Cup start, Hill finished ahead of the likes of Chase Briscoe, Ross Chastain, Daniel Suarez, Tyler Reddick, Kyle Busch and Austin Cindric, all of whom encountered problems via mechanical issues or wrecks.
“I think if I do get the opportunity again to run in the Cup Series down the road, hopefully I can take what I learned and kind of maximize the opportunity the next time because I felt like I probably drove a little bit on the cautious side for the majority of the race,” Hill said.
Aside from the race going by quicker than he assumed, Hill said the “biggest thing” he took from the 200-lap race was the intensity level.
Whereas a drive through the field in the Xfinity Series could seem like a casual Sunday drive, actually racing on Sunday is its own animal.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re in first or if you’re in 36th, the guy that’s in 35th right in front of you is racing just as hard like it’s for the lead,” Hill said. “That’s something that I kind of took from after the race was, ‘man, these guys just they race hard from Lap 1 to lap 200. And it doesn’t matter what position you’re in, what place you’re in there, they’re fighting for that spot like it’s the last lap and like it’s for the win.”
The moment that highlighted this for Hill came on a late restart when Hill restarted in the front half of the field.
Hill called the moments after the green flag like driving in a “hornet’s nest.”
“I’m sure that a lot of it was just me figuring the car out,” Hill said. “But on the restart for whatever reason we were way tighter on a restart than we would be throughout a run. So I’m trying to work the tires in as best as I can and get ready to go on this restart and felt like I gotta pretty good restart and then we kind of get into Turns 1 and 2 and I come off 2 pretty good and then I get into (Turn) 3 and man, I got aero tight behind somebody.
“And next thing you know, there was a swarm of them coming from both directions, left side and right side. I got passed by everybody and I just thought … I don’t know if you call it a surreal moment. But … It was kind of one of those eye-opening moments where it’s like, ‘Man, If you mess up just a little bit, there’s like eight guys coming from behind you that are gonna be driving by you like you’re sitting still.”
When it was all said and done, Hill said RCR officials gave him a positive review.
“They thought that I did a really good job and I think I was harder on myself than they were on me,” said Hill, who accomplished his main goal of completing every lap. “I’m over here pleased with it, but not satisfied at the same time.”
Hill doesn’t know when his next opportunity at a Cup start will come. Even though it’s August, Hill claimed to not even know 100% what he’ll be doing next year.
But he knows where he’ll be this weekend.
After one week off for the Xfinity Series and a family trip to Legloland in Florida, Hill returns to his full-time job driving RCR’s No. 21 Chevrolet.
The series makes its yearly return to Watkins Glen International in New York. For Hill, it’s a return to a track he found success at last year in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series. While racing for Hattori Racing Enterprises, Hill captured one of his two wins last year in the series’ visit to road course.
Hill and the No. 21 team ride into WGI on a streak of eight finishes inside the top 10. That includes three top 10s at road courses.
“Watkins Glen is by far probably one of my favorite racetracks to go to,” Hill said. “I really don’t even know why I just have always been pretty good there. … I have a lot of confidence at a place like Watkins Glen, I think it’s a place that we can win at.”
Should he win, it would be Hill’s third win of the season, but it would be his first at a non-superspeedway track after victories at Daytona International Speedway and his home track of Atlanta Motor Speedway.
“We’ve ran really well on the road courses, we kind of had a little bit of a hiccup at the Indy road course earlier a few weeks ago,” said Hill of his ninth-place result. “We were trying some different things and just trying to find a little bit more to be that little bit better. And we kind of went backwards. So we took that back out. And we’re kind of going a different route now for this weekend, kind of totally different than what we did the other four road courses we ran.
“So fingers crossed (that) we’re really, really good when we unload and we can we can have a shot at it to put it to all these guys.”
You can listed to the entire interview with Austin Hill in the Spotify embed below.