Austin Hill met with the media at Darlington Raceway Saturday morning. The conversation concerned last week’s controversial Xfinity Series event at Martinsville Speedway. The race ended as JR Motorsports driver Sammy Smith made contact with Taylor Gray, creating a chain reaction behind them.
Smith was fined $25,000 and docked 50 driver points, dropping him from sixth to 13th in the Xfinity Series Standings.
NASCAR officials spoke to the Xfinity Series drivers Friday morning at Darlington Raceway.
Eric Peterson, the Xfinity Series Managing Director, commented on the incident.
“We want to see really hard racing and door-to-door racing he said. And, contact is certainly a part of the sport and part of the sport at Martinsville Speedway.”
“We felt like after looking at all the facts, all the video, the team audio, SMT data and all the tools, we have to work with and review an incident like that.
“Unfortunately, what Sammy did was over the line and something that we feel like we had to react to. We would prefer to leave it in the driver’s hands. But, in this case, it wasn’t really a racing move and we reacted to it as such.”
Hill spoke to Allgaier after the meeting about taking more of a leadership role in the series going forward.
“Yeah, so Justin Allgaier and I had a really great conversation outside of the tent,” he said. We were walking back. I stopped him and we had a really good conversation.
“I think that him and I can both bring some really great things to the table. You know, Justin’s very respected on the racetrack. But he’s also super aggressive but he does it in a sneaky way. He’s super aggressive but he does it in a good way, in a sneaky way.
Hill thinks that sharing their viewpoints with all the Xfinity drivers will help the series accomplish a united goal.
“I think that him and I, both being veterans of the sport; he has different ways of looking at it than what I do. But, I think that we both can kind of bring our own perspective in a way and kind of reach both, you know, eras of drivers, as far as the super aggressive ones and maybe the ones that race extremely clean, whatever. I think that him and I can give a lot of feedback to the drivers.”
Hill realizes that things won’t change overnight, but hopes they can all work together toward one common goal.
“I don’t think that just one meeting is going to change the outcome of the playoff race in Martinsville, he said. “So, you know, it might be one of those cases where we need to have multiple meetings throughout the year just to reiterate some of the stuff.
“Even if things aren’t happening on the racetrack, even if it’s just a — say we’re all racing clean and we’re all doing the right things, but I think we got to keep it in everyone’s head that, you know, race the way you want to be raced and race with respect, and I thought that that’s kind of where we ended the conversation today and I thought it was all great.”
