By David Morgan, Associate Editor
HAMPTON, Ga. – Three things in life are certain: Death, taxes, and Austin Hill winning NASCAR Xfinity Series races at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
For the fourth time in the last six races on the 1.5-mile superspeedway, native Georgian Hill was able to be victorious on his home turf, piloting his No. 21 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet to victory, sweeping the season and banking his third win of the season.
Saturday’s win also breaks a winless streak dating back to February when Hill was able to start the season with wins at Daytona and Atlanta.
After starting in fourth place, Hill didn’t lead a single lap all day until the final restart, but kept his nose clean and found a way to pull off the victory.
Lining up on the front row for the final restart with 13 laps to go, Hill saw his opportunity to strike and took it, using a push from fellow Chevrolet driver Josh Williams to eke out in front of leader Chandler Smith and from then on, it was his race to lose.
A number of other contenders took shots at him as the laps wound down, most notably Parker Kligerman, who powered his way from fourth to second on the final lap and had Hill in his sights when Hill and Corey Heim made contact in Turn 2, but lost his momentum in Turn 3 after washing up the track, allowing Hill to skate to the win.
“It was just resilience with this whole Bennett 21 team. Like you said, our Bennett Chevrolet wasn’t handling great all day. It wasn’t as fast as Xfinity internet. Well, it had speed. I can’t say that. It had speed. Just the handle on it was tough all day. We had to dig deep for that one,” Hill said of how he pulled off the win.
“This is insane. To win with this gold car. Bennett’s 50th anniversary. This is their biggest race of the entire year. To do this for our sponsor, it means a lot. There’s over 500 people here for Bennett. Employees, friends, family, you name it.
“I can’t thank everyone enough from Bennett. RCR, ECR engines were just good all day. We’re going to celebrate this one because it didn’t come easy.”
Kligerman came home as the runner-up, beating AJ Allmendinger in a drag race back to the line, marking yet another race in which he was in position to make a run at the win, but ultimately fell short.
Nonetheless, it was a good points day for Kligerman and the No. 48 Big Machine Racing team, as they are still in the battle to make the Playoffs. With two races remaining in the regular season, Kligerman sits 74 points ahead of the cut-off line as the series heads to Watkins Glen and Bristol over the next two weeks.
“It’s nice to have a good finish. I just wanna win one of these,” Kligerman said. “It’s just so close and I can see it and feel it be there. And I love this game and I love being a part of it and I love being in it. I hope that we can find a way because it’s just, I’ve done this, what, 113 times now. I’ve failed at this over 15 years.
“I don’t know anyone that tries and sticks with something that long. I’d like to just kind of get that gratification one time. A run like this just gives you more momentum, more frustration. A little bit of both. Yeah. I mean, momentum for sure.
“We’ve got great tracks for us [coming up]. Watkins Glen, road course, one of my favorites in the world. Bristol, we ran the top five there last year. It’s one of my favorites in the world. So huge momentum. Good points position allows us to be aggressive and hopefully we can go and find ourselves in the Playoff with a lot of momentum.”
Chandler Smith came home in fourth-place, followed by Corey Heim, Jesse Love, Sammy Smith, Josh Williams, Brandon Jones, and Ryan Truex to round out the top-10 finishers.
The 163-lap race was stopped for yellow on six different occasions, most notably for Sam Mayer’s No. 1 Chevrolet catching fire at the end of Stage 2 after contact on track. He was able to get the vehicle stopped in short order and climb from his charred machine unscathed.
The other notable incident came on Lap 146, when the inevitable “Big One” struck in Turn 4. When all was said and done, six cars were involved including Ryan Sieg, Taylor Gray, Justin Allgaier, Cole Custer, Riley Herbst, and Jesse Love.
The crash started when Allgaier washed up the track, making contact with Gray and Custer, turning his JR Motorsports Chevrolet in front of the field and sweeping up the remaining cars in the crash.
The clean-up would bring out the red flag for 15 minutes, 43 seconds and set up the final restart that propelled Hill to victory.
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