Austin Hill's teammate may be best bet to beat him at Atlanta

Beating Austin Hill at EchoPark Speedway in NASCAR O'Reilly Auto Parts Series competition almost seems like a Sisyphean exercise of futility. 

The 31-year-old driver from Winston, Georgia, has five wins in eight starts at the 1.5-mile track located in Hampton, Georgia, and is the overwhelming favorite to win Saturday's Bennett Transportation & Logistics 250. Hill also won the Feb. 14 season-opener at Daytona International Speedway. 

But there's one driver who won't feel like he's rolling a boulder up a never-ending Georgia hill this weekend, and it's a man who races out of the same Richard Childress Racing stable as Hill: Jesse Love.

Jesse Love will be a threat at Atlanta

Love, the defending O'Reilly Series champion, has won a race each at the superspeedways of Daytona and Talladega. But a victory at EchoPark Speedway has eluded him thus far.

Love won the pole and led 157 laps in just the second start of his rookie campaign at EchoPark in February 2024 before Hill swooped and stole the win. He's led 39 laps in his three other starts at the track, has won the pole for three of his four starts and finished sixth twice. 

But he's been unable to wrangle the trophy away from Hill at EchoPark. And for that matter, so has the rest of the field. Only one of the three drivers who has managed to beat Hill at EchoPark — AM Racing's Nick Sanchez — will be in the field on Saturday. Ty Gibbs and John Hunter Nemechek both race full-time in the NASCAR Cup Series.

Hill and Love always have fast cars at drafting tracks, and both drivers manage to control the pack exceptionally well. It's Hill's experience in doing so that usually wins out. 

But if anyone is going to give Hill a run for his money at the home track for both himself and his primary sponsor in Bennett, it'll be Love, driving an RCR Chevrolet just like his adversary.