NASCAR Cup Series
Daytona International Speedway
Team Chevy Driver Quotes
August 28, 2026
Austin Hill, driver of the No. 33 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 and the No. 21 Chevrolet Camaro SS, met with the media in advance of running double duty in the NASCAR Cup and O’Reilly Auto Parts Series at Daytona International Speedway.
Media Availability Quotes:
Did you have a timeline of moving up to Cup next year? If that wouldn’t have happened, did you have a personal timeline where you would want to move up to Cup? And how close was it to that?
“Yeah, that’s a really good question. I would say I had been wanting to go to Cup for a little while now, but I wanted to make sure it was the right opportunity for me and not just jumping… any Cup car, and just to say I’m a cup driver, right? And that was something that I have always thought of for a very long time. I didn’t just want to jump in any type of Cup car just to say I’m racing in Cup now. I wanted to do it for the right organization, for the people that I wanted to be surrounded by. And I’ve always thought that since being at RCR for the last five years now, that that was the organization I wanted to be at.
“You know, I was kind of just biding my time. At the time, I didn’t know for sure what Kyle was going to be doing going into ’27. Obviously, there was a lot of speculation, rumors, all those things, and so I didn’t know what he was doing. Then with everything that’s transpired over the last several months, things quickly changed, and I had to kind of question myself on like, did I still want to do this? Do I still want to be in the Cup car, did I want to be taking the place of Kyle Busch? A lot of things were going through my head, and then I just kind of kept reminding myself that someone was going to be in the car. You know, they weren’t going to just retire that team. Someone was still going to run in that car, and so I just was like, ‘Well, I’ve been here for five years.’ You know, I feel like I’ve been extremely loyal to RCR. And roles reversed, kind of the same way. So I thought this was a great opportunity for me. If it wouldn’t have happened and they would have gone a different route, that would have been totally fine, too. I would have stayed in the O’Reilly Series and stayed in the 21 car for another year or two and just seen where that progressed and where that went. I haven’t been rushing it by any means on trying to get to the Cup level, but yeah here we are now. We’re going into the rest of the season trying to learn as much as I can, trying to balance both series and be ready and prepared as I can going into 2027.”
How nerve-wracking is that to know that there’s a possibility you’ll take a green flag never having raced this package here?
“Yeah, so qualifying, if it gets rained out, that’s not a huge concern to me because they have the car set up so much different in qualifying. Honestly, the car doesn’t drive very good in qualifying. It doesn’t matter if you’re the guy that’s sitting on the pole or you’re the guy that’s 36th, 38th on the grid. They just don’t drive very good in qualifying here. You know, they have them as low as they can possibly get them. They’re hitting the stops, the limiters, all those things, and so they kind of move around a lot. The car drives a lot different when you are in the draft and you are not in qualifying trim. So not having that lap really doesn’t concern me. What does concern me is that it is a totally different package, and we aren’t practicing. There’s a lot of different agendas. You’re going to have guys that are fully trimmed out for just straight raw speed, and you’re going to have guys that are full downforce and want to have a lot of balance in their car. We’re not going to know until that green flag drops on Saturday night what’s going to be the right case scenario. The only thing I am a little bit excited about with the Cup package is that from everything that I’ve been told and all of the data that I’ve gotten from GM, it seems to be as close as it can get to the O’Reilly side, and that makes me really excited. So I’m hoping that’s how it all is. But until the green flag drops, none of us are really going to know.”
What would it mean for you to get your fifth O’Reilly Series win here and potentially your first Cup Series win here, and potentially sweep the weekend?
“Yeah, I think that opportunity is definitely there. We’ve been good here at Daytona. Daytona’s been good to us, right? There’s been situations where we’ve won a race here and we didn’t think it was going to happen. The next thing you know, we just kind of find ourselves in the front at the very end, and the right runs happen or the right things happen. So yeah, I have a lot of confidence going into this weekend. I would love to check that box of getting a summer Daytona win. That’s something that’s kind of eluded me for a little while now. I can’t tell you the rhyme or reason why because it’s still Daytona. The only thing that I’ll say is, I think when you start out in February, people might be a little more reserved. I don’t know the exact answer to that, but when it comes down to the last race before the Chase… They want to get that last win and get all the points they can, and the intensity level picks up.
“On the Saturday night Cup deal, I think we have as good a chance as anyone. RCR has been very well-known for being fast on these super speedways, whether it’s the O’Reilly Series or the Cup Series. And it’s hard to win in Cup. You see it time and time again. Guys going on droughts and not winning races and things like that. So it’s going to be hard to get it done, but I think we have a really good shot at getting it done and going for Number Five on the O’Reilly side and getting the first one on the Cup side. That would be a perfect weekend for us. So yeah, hopefully that ends that way on Saturday night.”
You’re in your fifth full-time season with RCR in the O’Reilly Series. Looking back on that time, what do you think that’s taught you?
“Anytime you make a jump from one series to the next, it’s all always a transition. It’s a little bit of a jump, right? When I went from the truck level to the O’Reilly level, we obviously started off with a bang, winning here at Daytona. But then we kind of had some roller-coaster finishes where we’d have some decent days, and then other days wouldn’t be so good.
“I would say within these five years, just the effort and everything that I put into racing has went up. I’ve always felt like I put a lot of effort in, but I didn’t realize how much more effort I could be putting in and more time that I could be putting into the racing side of things… learning the cars better, figuring out setup packages and things like that that I like to drive because every driver is a little different, and I think that’s going to help me going into the Cup level. With me getting these opportunities of running the Cup car like I’m doing. I’m going to be a little bit ahead of the game going into next season, but in this offseason coming up, just figuring out exactly what I need in a Cup car to go fast. Now it might take a while throughout the season. Once it gets started, we might have those roller-coaster finishes. But I think where my mindset is now versus in 2022 when I got in the O’Reilly car, I think it’s a lot higher in my broad spectrum that I have of how I think about things is a lot greater, and I think that’s going to help me when I get in the Cup car. “
Is there one area that you really feel like you need to improve? What’s lacking from your repertoire that you feel you really need to buckle down on before you go full-time Cup racing?
“It’s a tough question because we’ve won at a lot of various different tracks on the O’Reilly series. But the only thing that sticks out to me, time and time again, is some of the short-track stuff that we run. Even though we’ve won at Martinsville with that chaotic finish, and I’ve had signs of running well at Bristol. I’m either running top-five at Martinsville or Bristol, or I’m running 20th. There’s no in between.
“I think that’s been our Achilles’ heel as a team and maybe me as a driver. Maybe I’m producing some of that. I’m not sure. So I would say effort-wise, I probably put even more effort into when we go to short-track racing than I do anything else. That’s one area that going into the Cup level, you’ve got to be good at every single racetrack, right? You’ve got to be good at various different things. So I think that’s something that I can work on, get better at, and then figuring out the way these Cup cars are in the dirty air. That’s one thing that’s kind of caught me off guard, especially with the C3 package that the Cup car runs on the mile-and-a-halfs and stuff. I think it’s tough for everyone, but it’s extremely tough for me right now on just how to position the car and the things that I need to do with the car on restarts. You see guys that’ll drive really deep in the corner, and they’re not really trying to pass you, but they’re trying to drive close enough to you where they can put dirty air on the car and get dirty air underneath the diffuser. The next thing you know, you are like getting tight off the corner and having to lift. All those things, I am still trying to learn on the fly, and I think throughout the rest of the season, that’s something I really need to hone in on and get a lot better at —how the dirty air and everything works to be better going into next year.”
When you stepped into the Cup car, going back several months, you stepped into a very emotional situation that was beyond anybody’s control. What have you done, and how have you worked with the team to be a comfort to everyone and be a leader and team building? And how will that help going into next season?
“I think for me, I’ve just been trying to show a ton of effort, right? I’m trying to just give all I can in both series, but especially on the Cup side – being at any type of simulator time that needs to be done. I’m in the simulator a few times a week, and then if I don’t feel like we’re in a good spot, I go up to RCR, run some more sim time on their static rig up there. So there’s things that I’m constantly doing, trying to get to know the team a lot better. A lot of these guys that I’m working with are kind of first time working with these guys. The one thing that’s been a little bit easier transition for me, I guess you’d say, is I’ve worked with Andy Street before. He’s my crew chief, right? So I’ve worked with him in the past. We’ve won races together on the O’Reilly side, so that kind of helped with things when I was coming over and doing this deal. And then Derek Nealon, my spotter, having that familiar voice on the radio spotting me, that’s kind of made everything a little bit easier for me. And then the pit crew. Most of the pit crew I know from the 21 team, so that’s kind of been an easier transition. But the rest of the team, you know, just trying to get to know them on a personal level because it’s always business related, right? We’re always working each and every week. It’s seven days a week. We’re just constantly going, going, going. I’m trying to get to know these guys on a personal level outside of the racing world, and just to show them that I care about these guys more than just what the results are on the racetrack.”
You’ve talked about the conversations that you had with Kevin Harvick after being thrust into the situation, and kind of tying it back to the situation that he was in as well. Are there any specific examples of you putting something into practice that he told you, and it helping the 33 and 8 teams?
“The biggest takeaway that I got from Kevin was just to be mentally tough and not to show your emotion in front of everyone. If you’re going to have a breakdown moment or anything like that happen, do that behind closed doors. You need to be the tough guy when it comes to driving the race car and being in the shop and being prepared and showing those guys that you mean business… that you’re here for them and you’re here to be that shoulder to lean on. That’s kind of one of the biggest takeaways for me. I’ve had to get a lot more mentally sharp than what I feel like I was, and I think that’s helped me as a person as a character.
“As a human being, I really appreciate the conversation that Kevin and I had. I could sit here and talk all day about some of the takeaways from it, but one of the biggest things that stuck with me is that you’ve just got to be that guy. You’ve got to be that leader. I’ve been trying to do that as best I can.”
And how would you describe the current morale on your team right now? How are Andy and his guys doing given the circumstances?
“I think everyone’s doing well for the situation at hand. It’s still very new. I saw Samantha (Busch) this weekend at afar, and it’s very emotional when you see her. I haven’t gotten to see her up close and have a conversation with her yet this weekend. But just seeing her, there’s a lot of things that go through my mind, and the biggest thing is family. You just hold your loved ones tighter at night and check in on people that maybe you haven’t checked in on for a while. I think the team’s doing good for the situation at hand, but they still need a shoulder to lean on every now and then. We’re kind of trying to have that bond and everything within the entire 33 / 8 team.”
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