(Photo: Myk Crawford | The Podium Finish)
LAS VEGAS — Austin Hill came into Saturday’s NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway with three wins, all coming at superspeedways.
That reputation finally changed.
Hill passed Chandler Smith with two laps to go to win the Alsco Uniforms 300, his second victory in three tries to open the 2023 season. A long green-flag run that spanned 103 laps the entire final stage gave Hill the opportunity to run down Smith, the dominant car all afternoon.
“It feels nice to get a win outside of superspeedway racing,” Hill told the media after the race. “I was able to do that on the truck side, I was able to win on mile-and-a-halves and other types of racetracks, road courses, that type of thing. That’s what I wanted to do this year. I knew that we were going to have chances and good shots to win on the superspeedways, but I wanted to get our mile-and-a-half program a lot better.”
(Photo: Myk Crawford | The Podium Finish)
Hill led 19 laps, but most of those came early in the race. He took the lead from Smith on Lap 86 to win Stage 2 and also finished third in Stage 1.
Hill and Smith battled throughout the afternoon, but Hill had an advantage off pit road when he pitted on Lap 143. Though he blended in front, Smith passed him a few laps later and became the leader once pit stops cycled through.
Smith led from that point on, but in the closing laps, suddenly got tight.
“It was about 10 to go, I noticed that the 16 was struggling a little bit, he was getting really tight,” Hill said. “I kept kind of missing my marks in [turns] three and four, and I just kind of had to tell myself that I need to back up my entry into three, get back to the throttle early and really wrap the bottom of four really well.
“We’re about to take the white [and] I saw that he missed the line just a little bit down in three and four and he slipped up off the bottom and I backed up my corner and got back to the throttle really, really early. [I was] just hoping that it was going to stick, and it stuck really well. He wasn’t able to come down and sidedraft me.”
Smith, who led a race-high 118 laps, qualified on the poll and eventually finished third after Justin Allgaier passed him on the final lap.
(Photo: Christopher Vargas | The Podium Finish)
“That’s a tough pill to swallow,” Smith told FOX Sports. “There’s some things I could have done inside before we started building tight just getting my lead to be a little bit bigger to have a bigger buffer … we’re going to win a few races this year for sure.”
Allgaier’s second-place finish is his third top-three result to start the season. He overcame a restart violation early in the race to get the result to pace JR Motorsports. The 36-year-old finished third at both Daytona and Auto Club and sits second in driver’s points to Hill (-21).
STAGE 1: John Hunter Nemechek, Justin Allgaier, Austin Hill, Chandler Smith, Riley Herbst, Daniel Hemric, Kyle Busch, Sammy Smith, Sheldon Creed, Josh Berry.
STAGE 2: Austin Hill, Brandon Jones, Kyle Busch, Sam Mayer, Sammy Smith, Chandler Smith, Riley Herbst, Cole Custer, Brett Moffitt, Sheldon Creed.
FINAL: Austin Hill, Justin Allgaier, Chandler Smith, Kyle Busch, Josh Berry, John Hunter Nemechek, Sam Mayer, Riley Herbst, Sheldon Creed, Daniel Hemric.
