Austin Hill’s win in Friday night’s World of Westgate 200 Gander Outdoors Truck Series race was good enough to punch an automatic ticket to the next round of the series Playoffs. But equally as important to Hill and his Hattori Racing Enterprises team, the victory is an unmistakable reminder that the 25-year-old Georgia native expects to be a major player in the series championship.
The Las Vegas trophy is his third this season (also at Daytona and Michigan). He has six top-five finishes and 11 top 10s through the opening 19 races.
He took the lead from three-race winner Ross Chastain with 11 laps to go. And it was a strong statement victory that Hill should also be counted among the title favorites along with Chastain and reigning series champ Brett Moffitt, who won the opening two races of the Playoffs.
“It means the world to me,’’ Hill said of his win late Friday night. “This is the hardest one I’ve had to win. We were going to stay out that last caution and we stayed out and everybody else pitted. We decided we needed to pit or we were going to be screwed.
“We came down pit road, restarted at the tail-end of the longest line and it stayed green. I had to drive all the way through the field and this truck was unbelievable.’’
Greg is the author of "The Nuts and Bolts of NASCAR: The Definitive Viewers' Guide to Big-Time Stock Car Auto Racing" and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, a Masters degree in psychology and is currently a PhD candidate majoring in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek.
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