Hill Continues Daytona Mastery – SPEED SPORT

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Austin Hill continued his mastery of NASCAR’s big tracks dominating Saturday’s United Rentals 300 at Daytona International Speedway.

It was the Georgia native’s fourth win in this NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series season opener here in the last five years.

And so typically happens on Daytona’s 2.5-mile superspeedway, the outcome came down to the dramatic last few laps and the race was decided by a split second.

Although he started from pole position and led a race high 78 of the 120 laps, Hill was tested all night – ultimately having to prevail on three restarts in the final 12 laps. His No. 21 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet beat 2024 season champion, JR Motorsports driver Justin Allgaier in another Chevrolet to the finish line by a slight .081 seconds.

It marked the famed Richard Childress Racing team’s fifth consecutive win in this race, tying a mark set by Dale Earnhardt Inc. from 1990-94. It was Hill’s 15th career victory and 11th on a drafting style track.

Even after holding the lead for most of the event, Hill said he had some concerns following a mid-race green flag pit stop – saying post-race that at one point he was fairly certain he would end up on a wrecker unable to handle the tight draft and aggressive pushes the conclusion of this race so typically includes. He dropped back to 12th but the new tires he took and some choice maneuvering landed him right back into the mix up front.

“Just shows how good this team is,” Hill said of being able to pit late and out of sequence but still move forward when it mattered most. “It was a really tough decision to go from being 14th or wherever it was we re-started. But it just goes to show how good this team was. We had that restart and no one was going middle, so I was like, ‘sure I’ll take it.’ Drove right up through there.”

On the final restart with two laps remaining, Hill said he thought he may have misjudged one move but, “luckily I was able to make the block on the [number] seven [Allgaier], almost missed the block, and had to save the car. After that it was just hammer down and hope they didn’t get back to me.

“Daytona has just been so good to me,” said Hill, who swept both stage wins in addition to leading the most laps. “I love this place and it’s always fun to win.”

RSS Racing owner-driver Ryan Sieg finished third despite being caught up in a mid-race incident. Another owner-driver Jordan Anderson Racing’s namesake Jordan Anderson was fourth, followed by Allgaier’s JR Motorsports teammate Sammy Smith.

Ryan Ellis, Carson Kvapil, Blaine Perkins, Hill’s teammate Jesse Love and Rajah Caruth rounded out the top 10.

Love led 27 laps, second only to Hill, but got caught up in the frantic final laps – his ninth place showing not truly indicative of his evening.

“At the end I feel for my guys,” Love said. “They want to be where that 21 group [Hill] is. I’m still a step behind Austin. He’s so great at this craft. I feel like he’s a little more patient than I am right now, and I think that’s what my learning lesson is after tonight.

“I think I just wasn’t patient enough when I really needed to be, you know, taking Sammy three wide probably wasn’t the right move there. Made some other moves along the way in waning laps that I could have done about. I’ll look back at it and learn from it, and next week is a similar style of flow of things. I’ll try to take this learning lesson and bring that to Georgia.”

The finish:

1. (1)  Austin Hill, Chevrolet, 120.
2. (13)  Justin Allgaier, Chevrolet, 120.
3. (10)  Ryan Sieg, Chevrolet, 120.
4. (17)  Jordan Anderson, Chevrolet, 120.
5. (12)  Sammy Smith, Chevrolet, 120.
6. (32)  Ryan Ellis, Chevrolet, 120.
7. (11)  Carson Kvapil, Chevrolet, 120.
8. (14)  Blaine Perkins, Chevrolet, 120.
9. (2)  Jesse Love, Chevrolet, 120.
10. (7)  Rajah Caruth, Chevrolet, 120.
11. (26)  Anthony Alfredo, Chevrolet, 120.
12. (25)  Brennan Poole, Chevrolet, 120.
13. (19)  Patrick Emerling(i), Chevrolet, 120.
14. (27)  Parker Retzlaff, Chevrolet, 120.
15. (36)  Kyle Sieg, Chevrolet, 120.
16. (37)  Lavar Scott #, Chevrolet, 120.
17. (34)  Josh Bilicki, Chevrolet, 120.
18. (8)  Patrick Staropoli #, Chevrolet, 120.
19. (38)  Carson Ware, Chevrolet, 120.
20. (20)  Carson Hocevar(i), Chevrolet, 120.
21. (33)  Daniel Dye(i), Ford, 120.
22. (30)  Austin Green, Chevrolet, 118.
23. (23)  Luke Fenhaus #, Ford, 117.
24. (5)  Sheldon Creed, Chevrolet, 116.
25. (22)  Jeb Burton, Chevrolet, DVP, 107.
26. (4)  William Sawalich, Toyota, DVP, 99.
27. (6)  Corey Day, Chevrolet, Accident, 99.
28. (9)  Taylor Gray, Toyota, Accident, 99.
29. (24)  Harrison Burton, Toyota, Accident, 98.
30. (15)  Brandon Jones, Toyota, DVP, 92.
31. (3)  Sam Mayer, Chevrolet, Accident, 91.
32. (29)  Jeremy Clements, Chevrolet, Accident, 91.
33. (35)  Natalie Decker, Chevrolet, Accident, 91.
34. (31)  Josh Williams, Chevrolet, Engine, 77.
35. (18)  Dean Thompson, Toyota, Suspension, 68.
36. (28)  Nick Sanchez, Ford, Accident, 32.
37. (16)  Giovanni Ruggiero(i), Toyota, Accident, 29.
38. (21)  Mason Maggio, Chevrolet, Accident, 0.