There was a time, believe it or not, that Austin Hill was the bullied and not the bully on a race track.
At least, a bully is how fans and some of his peers seem to describe Hill, the 30-year-old Georgian called Big Country who has a reputation as a hard-driving old-school racer who does not care if it ruffles feathers.
That is certainly what his team owner, the legendary Richard Childress, likes about him the most.
“He races just to win,” Childress said. “He wants to win. That’s why he is staying in Xfinity for a couple of years. He wants to be able to spend time with his family and watch his kids grow up on Sundays. I thought that was smart.
“But he has the talent to race in Cup but he wants to wait until he knows he can go there and be in a position to win races. But my favorite part is that he has that don’t piss me off attitude and I like that.”
There have been several points over the past almost three years that his peers have not liked it, however. Hill routinely finds himself near the front of the field and he is a tenacious pass and an unrepentant passer.
Everyone asked about racing with him on Tuesday at NASCAR Xfinity Series Media Day offered respect, even if there have been times they have been crossways with him on the track in recent years.
As a veteran racer who finds himself as a mainstay in the Xfinity Series, Justin Allgaier says he relates to a lot of how Hill conducts himself.
“Austin is a polarizing figure,” Allgaier said. “I think we are similar in that it doesn’t take a lot to get under our skin on the race track. He’s vocal about it. He races hard and I have a lot of respect for him because we haven’t gotten upset at each other too much.
“I think it’s interesting right now that you have a different group of racers now than you did two years ago with a different style and different upbringing and I think he’s responsible for that a little bit.”
Chandler Smith, who has swapped paint with him in both Trucks and Xfinity, feels like they are kindred spirits.
“Austin will race you with respect, if you have respect for him, and I feel like we have a lot of respect for each other just with the process and the way we grew up racing,” Smith said. “And last year, being with Kaulig Racing and being on the RCR campus, we were essentially teammates, and grew a tighter knit relationship then, then we did in Trucks and we had a good relationship in Trucks as well
“That plays into how we race each other compared to a person I may not have as much respect for just because we’ve raced the crap out of each other every time we race. Austin is not going to be the guy that will try to wreck me halfway through stage two at Kansas. That’s just not him.”
That runs counter to his reputation, at least from fans, who feel like he isn’t fair but Hill says he has both a code and also a deep-seeded reason behind it.
“It’s the way I was raised from a young age, when I was coming up in Bandoleros and Legend cars,” Hill said. “I used to get pushed around a lot. I was the kid that would get pushed on and not pushed back and I didn’t want to end up on anyone’s bad side. I never used the bumper and I would move out of the way if someone got into the back of me.
“My dad pulled me aside at an early age and said ‘if you are going to make it as a race car driver, you can’t take this much crap’ and it changed my philosophy.”
To Smith’s point, Hill says he aims to be fair.
“I try to be as respectful as I can on the race track but when it’s time to get elbows up, I will go to the limits of what is required. I’m not going to right rear hook you in the wall or anything like that, but I will test the limits to do what it takes to win a race and it comes back to how I was raised.”
Hill even elicited a compliment from Cole Custer, who just five months ago was furious over a crash between them at Charlotte Motor Speedway, where Hill stayed in the gas long after they crashed.
With that said, he has moved on and he thinks more about the times they’ve raced professionally than that one moment.
“Obviously, we got together at Charlotte earlier this year, but at the end of the day I don’t have a problem with Austin,” Custer said. “We’ve moved on from that and I feel like we’ve always raced each other really well, for the most part, so I don’t have a problem with Austin. He’s somebody who definitely gets the most out of his cars as the driver and he’s good competition, for sure.”
The most infamous rival Hill has had over the past year was someone who had generally been a good friend and teammate in Sheldon Creed. They forged a relationship while they were in the Truck Series and then became teammates at RCR.
That dynamic devolved first with a run-in at Bristol last year and then at Martinsville when both teammates used each other up on a green-white-checkered costing both cars a spot in the championship race
Creed said preferential treatment from Childress to Hill and always being made a scapegoat was why he left for Joe Gibbs Racing before this season in the first place.
“I mean, it was rough there after Martinsville, obviously,” Creed sad. I don’t know, Austin and I didn’t talk for about four-to-five months. And then, yeah, we’ve hung out a couple times away from the track and we’ve not talked about it at all.
“Yeah, I think that we’re in a much better place now. I was good friends with a lot of people who are at RCR, all the engine and shop guys, the road crew and all those relationships stayed the same. I don’t think the No. 21 team was a fan of mine for awhile but we’ve been good all year now.”
Like a lot of racers said on Tuesday, Parker Kligerman says you get back what you put in with Hill.
“My mom always said kill them with kindness so I try to be his best friend,” Kligerman said. “I don’t know if has worked or not but he has worked with me on superspeedways a lot so I think it has worked. I’ve tried to be a good teammate since our cars come from the RCR campus.”
Big picture as a race fan and television analyst, Kligerman also thinks the way Hill races is good for business.
“He is an aggressive race car driver and I love it,” Kligerman said. “There are times I watch him and I say ‘I want to be that aggressive, I want to be that badass,’ and it’s just not in my nature. I have huge respect for his ability, aggression, and his No Fs given attitude. The sport needs characters like that. He brings an aggression level like no one else in this sport right now.”
AJ Allmendinger says Hill is a quintessential modern NASCAR racer.
“I have no problem with Austin,” Allmendinger said. “We have raced each other hard and we have gotten into each other at times, but at the end of the day, we’re NASCAR racing. We all race each other like, well, there’s word I could say, but I’ll put it this way.
“We all race each other the way we get raced. When you get raced overly hard, you race them hard back. But in these days, the days of being under someone at Darlington and lifting to let them go are over anyways, and Austin races like it’s modern NASCAR racing.
“And at the end of the day, I’ve never had a problem with it.”
And ultimately, as Allgaier puts it, there is something to be said about his style actually working.
“I have known Austin for a long time and I’ve raced him for a long time,” Allgaier said. “Austin is a racer you always have to think about because they may fire off and struggle and you might think their day is over, but somehow they are in the top-3 battling for the win, and you could have sworn they were done.
“I expect them to be there all the way to the end, and there might be times that you think they are done, but that team just keeps coming back and Austin will be in the mix no matter what.”
Could this show ever come to the Cup Series with Richard Childress Racing?
“He is good enough to race on Sundays,” Childress said. “I want us to do it together but we need to sort out our charter business first.”
