Austin Hill Conserves Enough Fuel to Win Atlanta

Another week, another Austin Hill victory. 

The No. 21 Richard Childress Racing driver was able to conserve enough gas to claim his second NASCAR Xfinity Series win in a row at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

Under a full moon, Hill took the lead in overtime to win his third race at his home track.

Chandler Smith was second, Shane van Gisbergen was third and Sheldon Creed and Parker Retzlaff earned their second-consecutive top fives of the season.

Winners

I’d like to revisit my point from last week that Hill is skilled at superspeedway races. While yes, Atlanta isn’t as big as the other superspeedways, it still features drafting and can sometimes produce large crashes.

But Hill won because of fuel mileage, right? Yes and no. When Jesse Love dropped out of the pack at the start of overtime, Hill was in the right place at the right time and took control of the race. How did he get to that point to be ready to take the lead? With a good strategy, good pit stops and Hill’s desire to side draft the car in front of him while in the midst of a long train of cars.

Hill is very talented and can win in several different ways, as he displayed these first two weeks of the season.

Shout out to van Gisbergen, who pitted during the last caution and surged through the field to place third. He learned some things about his car this week and applied it throughout the race to take a podium finish.

Since several cars ran out of fuel, that opened the door for some underdogs to earn good results. Retzlaff especially impressed since he earned his second-straight top five. The strong runs has him in the top five in points to start the year. 

Other drivers who took home good results were Jeremy Clements (sixth), Anthony Alfredo (seventh), Jeffrey Earnhardt (eighth), Kyle Weatherman (17th) and BJ McLeod (18th). These finishes can make a difference when more than 38 cars are attempting to make the race. A select number of drivers and teams make the field on points even if they are slower than the ones with less points. So the more points that a driver or team has, the better chance they have to qualify for the race.

Plus, everybody loves an underdog, right?

Losers

The obvious choice is all the drivers who ran out of fuel in the closing laps. With about three laps to go, Stewart-Haas Racing’s Cole Custer and Riley Herbst ran out of fuel and had to make a pit stop. Then, Ryan Sieg stalled after running out of gas, bringing out the…