The Xfinity Series race at Martinsville ended with everybody a little disappointed, even the winner. The race featured 14 cautions, meaning there was enough contact and hard racing for every driver to get riled up about, not least the final Overtime restart.
But when the dust settled, it was Austin Hill who snuck through on the bottom as cars wrecked to his outside to take the checkered flag for his first win at Martinsville. The win was sweetened by the $100,000 bonus from the Dash 4 Cash and because it marked the 100th win for his Richard Childress Racing team in the Xfinity Series.
Hill was seventh at the beginning of the Overtime restart. But the action was at the front of the field, between Taylor Gray and Sammy Smith. Gray had been in control of the race until a restart just prior with five laps to go when he was shoved out of the way by Smith and lost the lead. So on the Overtime restart, Gray chose to start in third behind Smith and gave him a push up the track.
By the final set of corners, Gray had the lead by over a car-length. Nevertheless, Smith went for the move, driving hard into the back of Gray’s bumper, sending him spinning. That also checked up Smith, bunching up the cars behind. That gave Hill the chance to give Justin Allgaier, who had been running just behind, a bump into the side of Smith, which opened the door for Hill to cruise by on the inside.
It wasn’t the sort of win that Hill wanted, though, and he expressed his displeasure with the contact-heavy racing at Martinsville. Nonetheless, he was happy with the win and especially the added bonuses of the money and the milestone for his team.
“I mean, it feels good, but at the same time it just feels crappy. Just how you have to do it, how you have to race here,” Hill said. “It’s just unfortunate that that’s how you have to race here. I know that I can be aggressive, I know that I can do all those things, but I like to race with respect at the end of the day. Even if I lean on you a bit, I try to do it in a certain way and not just go in and wreck you.”
He explained that the pushes he gave to squeeze through on the final lap were a reaction to the way he saw his competitors racing.
“When I saw everybody else just bulldozing through and leaning on everybody, I said, alright, I’m pulling the belts tight and on this green-white-checkered it’s just going to be what it is. The seas parted for me,” he described, “while I was behind the 7 [of Allgaier] and I just knew when I got in deep and I saw the 7 connected to the 54 that I just had to give him enough of a shove to get underneath him,” he described.
The thought of finally getting a maiden Martinsville win was enough to quickly put any of those thoughts aside and focus on the celebrations.
“Martinsville has not been great to us. It’s one of those places where we’ve had speed at times and we’ve been on the receiving end of losing the race. We were able to be the aggressors tonight and end up on top,” Hill said. “Awesome to get this win, awesome to get the $100,000 from Xfinity, and we’re going to party on this one. I party after race wins, this one I’m really partying.”
Second-place Sheldon Creed moved down right behind Hill to the inside line just before the final set of corners and he was able to follow Hill through the gap right to the checkered flag. The result adds to Hill’s record, now of 14 runner-up finishes without a win, more than any other Xfinity Series driver, but he wasn’t unhappy with this one since he wasn’t making ground on the restart on his own.
“Yeah, I mean, the last 70 [laps] were messy, we didn’t go very many laps green there,” he commented. “I kind of knew how it was boiling down and chose where the 21 [of Hill] chose to restart before and thought that it worked okay. Just all those caution laps made the top go away there.
“To fall into a top-three is great, another second-place finish but I don’t care,” Creed said. “It’s still a great finish for our guys… Hard to be mad at that.”
Justin Allgaier emerged from the carnage in third, powering his damaged car to the line once he was able to push past the sideways Sammy Smith. He said that the end was not a surprise.
“I mean, it’s what we thought was coming,” Allgaier said. “It just sucks that it’s kind of what the racing has become at Martinsville. You know, this place is so awesome and so much fun, and then to have what we had on that last couple of laps… it’s just pitiful, honestly.
“I hate it for everybody on our Brandt Professional Agriculture Camaro, we did a good job all day, we executed well. We made the right calls on pit road, the strategy was good. I just hate that we didn’t win the Dash 4 Cash, we didn’t win the race, and all from guys just not using their heads.”
Like any unpredictable and carnage-heavy race, some drivers ended up on the fortunate end of everything. That included Brennan Poole, who scored the first top-five finish for the No. 44 car for Alpha Prime Racing not on a superspeedway in its five-year history. But while he certainly benefited from the carnage, it was still a strong run for the team regardless, just with a few more positions at the end.
“I mean, it’s pretty big,” Poole said. “Just a lot of fun tonight, we had a really good racecar and we made a lot of the right decisions. And I could just get the car to cut the middle like I needed it to and drive up off the bottom and I was able to just do what I needed to do to put ourselves in position for it to just go our way.
“We played a little tire strategy there at the end of the race, got ourselves in position, and man it was close. I wish I had been a few spots better there and we would’ve had a shot to win this thing,” he laughed. “We just made the right decisions and missed the chaos at the end.”
Sam Mayer finished fifth to wrap up the top five. Dean Thompson, Daniel Dye, Ryan Sieg, and Kris Wright earned top-ten finishes. Sammy Smith ultimately came home in 10th.
He met Taylor Gray, who went spinning after contact from Smith and dropped down to 29th at the end of the race, at the infield care center. The conversation came to blows which was quickly broken up.
Gray took the chance to say a few words after the brief altercation.
“It is what it is. Sammy is so far in his own land,” he laughed. “I can’t thank everybody from Joe Gibbs Racing enough, that was the fastest car I’ve ever had at Martinsville in my whole life and it showed. We were really good… Just have to keep the consistency up and keep bringing good cars to the track and we’re going to get us a few.”
Gray said that getting pushed out of line on the penultimate restart was acceptable, and indeed he did the same thing to Smith at the beginning of the Overtime restart. But he said that the move in the final set of corners was completely out of bounds.
“The whole interaction in turn one, where initially he moved me up the racetrack and he got the lead from me and I did the same thing to him, I think that’s fair, right? We’re coming down to the end of the race. I was a little upset when he first did it to me, just because I felt like I hadn’t put a scratch on him all year, he could’ve raced me a little better. But then again, it’s Martinsville and I have to understand that’s going to happen,” Gray said.
“But what he did getting into [turn] three, that takes no talent. All you’ve got to do is let off the brake pedal and just completely destroy me. I don’t know, it ruined his race too, so I don’t know.”
Gray wasn’t the only unhappy driver who felt like they missed a chance to win. Rookie driver Connor Zilisch swept both the first and second stages, a rare feat at Martinsville, but ended up 28th after problems in the final stage. He chose to stay out in a caution in the second stage to secure the stage win, but that meant he ended up back in the pack when he did end up pitting at the stage break and suffered some nose damage trying to race his way back to the front. He spun twice later in the stage to compound the issue, once on his own and once after contact. He’ll just be one of many walking away unhappy.
The Xfinity Series returns on Saturday, April 5th at Darlington Raceway.
