(Photo: Cornnell Chu | The Podium Finish)
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Austin Hill survived a chaotic NASCAR Overtime session — avoiding a Sam Mayer flip — en route to a season-opening Xfinity Series victory at Daytona International Speedway.
Mayer, who got a run out of Turn 2 and tried to pass teammate Justin Allgaier, threw a late block on Hill and got turned onto his roof. The caution was displayed and NASCAR went to the monitor to declare a winner. Mayer exited his car uninjured.
Three drivers — Hill, Allgaier and John Hunter Nemechek — were all within inches of each other at the time of caution. The three pulled up to the entrance of pit road and awaited the ruling.
After nearly five minutes, NASCAR declared Hill the winner and Nemechek the second-place finisher. Allgaier finished third.
“I actually thought that I was in a really good spot. I actually thought that I was controlling the line the way that I needed to. I was making sure that I didn’t get too far out,” Hill said of the final restart. “When I lined up on the top and I had the cars that I had behind me, I figured they would just bail right away and try to pass each other. I felt like I was going to be a sitting duck, and then it just all worked out.”
The victory is the third of Hill’s career. He won this race last season as well as the Atlanta Motor Speedway summer race. He nearly won the summer Daytona race, too.
Hill overcame radio issues from early in the race when he lost his pole position and had to drive from the rear of the field. He won the first stage.
“I can sit here and say that I have a ton of confidence on these superspeedways,” Hill said. “RCR builds such fast Bennett Chevrolets, and I can sit here and say that when we went in the race today, even though we had our radio issues, we had our issues we had at the start of the race, when we drove from the back to inside the top 10 within seven laps, I was like, man, this is our race to lose. We were so fast. I could make moves whenever I wanted to and do things that other guys couldn’t. It’s fun when you have a car like that.”
The final caution came from a mishap amongst the four JR Motorsports cars, who ran in positions two through five with two laps remaining. Brandon Jones made a block, but contact from Josh Berry sent him spinning down the backstretch.
Allgaier was the only JRM car inside the top 10. Berry ran out of fuel before the restart and finished 26th. Jones finished 14th.
(Photo: Kevin Ritchie | The Podium Finish)
“It’s crazy how fast our car was tonight and how good we were in traffic,” Allgaier said. “I thought I could get enough of a draft off of that [Berry] car and maybe they couldn’t catch me, but I just got too far out there, and that was really all it came down to.”
Nemechek’s podium finish comes in his first race as a full-time driver with Joe Gibbs Racing. He spent the past two seasons driving for Kyle Busch Motorsports in the Craftsman Truck Series, making sporadic Xfinity starts.
He’s off to a strong start in the next chapter of his career.
“Just proud of the effort. It’s been a long off-season waiting to get to Daytona and just to be that close,” Nemechek said. “It was really close there when they threw the caution, I thought we were ahead. Just can’t thank Myatt Snider (teammate) enough for working with me all day. We didn’t have the numbers with the Toyotas, it was definitely a Chevy type of day. But we worked well together, and we were able to come home in second and fifth.”
Thirty-two of the 125 laps were completed under yellow (eight cautions). Bayley Currey (engine), Blaine Perkins (accident), Daniel Hemric (accident), Ryan Ellis (accident), Sheldon Creed (accident), Brennan Poole (engine), Kaz Grala (engine), CJ McLaughlin (accident) and Jesse Iwuji (electrical) all failed to finish.
