The 12 NASCAR Xfinity Series Playoff drivers met with the media Tuesday afternoon to discuss the seven-race Playoff slate that begins with Friday night’s Food City 300 at the famed Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway (7:30 p.m. ET on USA Network, PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) and concludes with NASCAR’s thrilling triple-header championship week at Phoenix Raceway where a driver will be crowned the 2023 NASCAR Xfinity Series champion.
Joe Gibbs Racing driver John Hunter Nemechek holds a 10-point edge over the Regular Season Champion Austin Hill, of Richard Childress Racing. JR Motorsports’ Justin Allgaier is third, 23 points back, followed by Stewart-Haas Racing’s Cole Custer and JR Motorsport’s Sam Mayer.
Kaulig Racing’s Chandler Smith, JR Motorsport’s Josh Berry, Hill’s RCR teammate Sheldon Creed, Nemechek’s JGR teammate Sammy Smith, Jordan Anderson Racing’s Jeb Burton, Kaulig Racing’s Daniel Hemric – the 2021 series champion – and Big Machine Racing’s Parker Kligerman round out the group of 12 drivers eligible to contend for the 2023 Xfinity Series trophy.
Hill, 29, earned the Regular Season Championship last week at Kansas Speedway saying, “It just shows no matter how tough the battle is and how tough the uphill climb is we never quite fighting.”
The driver of the No. 21 RCR Chevrolet, has four wins this season, including two of the first three races and with the Playoff re-set, will start 10 points behind the six-race winner Nemechek heading to Bristol this weekend.
“No not at all,” Hill said of considering himself an odds-on title favorite. “I think the 20 car [Nemechek] has to be the favorite, they’ve just been really fast all season long, they have six wins on the year. The main reason why we were able to win the Regular Season Championship was that we were just very consistent all year where the 20, they had more roller-coaster finishes going, and we were more even-keel.
“I don’t’ see us being a clear favorite, I think the 20 probably is, but we’re a good enough organization to make it to the Final Four and if you can make it to the Final Four, anything can happen.”
And although Hill has two Xfinity wins and a NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series victory on the Daytona superspeedway – he bristles at being labeled merely a “big track specialist,” noting that during his career he’s won on every style of race track. And he’ll need to in this seven-race run for a title that includes the half-mile Bristol high-banks and the Charlotte ROVAL among its Playoff venue list.
“I kind of laugh anytime someone says that [superspeedway specialist] because if you look at my wins at the Truck level, I won on all different types of tracks,” Hill said. “I won on the dirt track. I won at Watkins Glen (road course). I won on superspeedways and mile-and-a-halves so a lot of different race tracks.
“I’ve always felt like I could win on any given track we go to. … but it gives me a little bit of a chip on the shoulder. I’ve always been the guy no one really talks a lot about, always been the dark horse, so it kind of just gives me a little chip on my shoulder and want to prove to everybody that I can win on all these sorts of race tracks. All you have to do is look at what we’ve done this season.”
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