Austin Hill came out P1 during Saturday’s NASCAR Xfinity Series event at Atlanta Motor Speedway, but it wasn’t without some controversy.
While Hill clinched back-to-back wins for Richard Childress Racing, it was his teammate Jesse Love who had the car to beat on the afternoon. However, like many others in the final laps of the race, Love ran out of fuel, leaving Hill to swoop in and take the checkered flag after the final restart.
The caveat is the abnormally long caution the race had in overtime, which many believe directly led to some of the top contenders running out of gas, like Love and Parker Kligerman. On Tuesday, NASCAR VP of Competition Elton Sawyer explained why the yellow flag seemed to linger a little longer than usual.
“For us in the tower, it was longer than we would have wanted but a lot of that was the anxiety of knowing where the teams were in their fuel mileage,” Sawyer said, per Matt Weaver of Sportsnaut. “If you look at it, we had cars, and the 7 was one of them that really initiated it… you have to go get him and you can’t leave him on pit road.
“As we’re coming to the choose, we had the 92 that was out of fuel and had to go get him. A lot of that was circumstantial. We wanted to get back (green) as soon as possible for what we were dealing with. There is a sequence of events that have to happen, open pit road and things of that nature. We’ll talk about that today to see if we can do anything different .. The way the cards were dealt, we needed to make sure the track was ready and all the cars were off the apron.”
In the end, the caution may have cost Love a shot at his first Xfinity Series win. Regardless, with two poles to his name already and a ton of laps led, it’s evident it’s coming for the 19-year-old budding star of Richard Childress Racing.
After the caution flag was finally put away, the leaders running out of gas caused mayhem on the track, and it was Hill who cut through the middle to take the lead. After all the chaos, there simply wasn’t enough time for anyone to catch him, and his second consecutive victory was secured.
As we move to Las Vegas, we’ll see if Austin Hill can make it three in a row, or if Jesse Love has anything to say about it, as he hopes to not run out of gas in the closing laps once again.
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