NASCAR Cup Series
Talladega Superspeedway
Team Chevy Driver Quotes
October 24, 2026
Austin Hill, driver of the No. 33 Camaro ZL1 and No. 21 Camaro SS for Richard Childress Racing, met with the media in advance of running double duty in the NASCAR Cup and O’Reilly Auto Parts Series at Talladega Superspeedway.
Media Availability Quotes:
Austin, a lot has changed at Talladega. Can you talk to us about your season so far and your hopes for the races this weekend?
“Yeah, so this season, in general, has just been a lot of rollercoasters. You know, being tasked with doing the Cup side has thrown kind of a little bit of a curveball in some things. Going back and forth between the two is not the easiest thing to do, especially the way that both series of cars drive. Trying to still put all the effort into the O’Reilly side and the Cup side together, you know, it just kind of creates a little bit of a task. But I feel like we’ve been doing an okay job with it. You know, ever since the Chase started, we’ve just had things happen. Whether it’s been my doing, like last week speeding on pit road, or having right front tires go down, having loose wheels at Gateway; there’s just been things that have happened that’s kind of, I wouldn’t say fully knocked us out of the Chase on the O’Reilly side, but, man, we would have to really put it on them these last three races and we’d have to have some guys that have some misfortune starting this weekend.
So, you know, I’m not going to sit here and say that we’re out of it by any stretch of the matter. I’m planning on going and winning both stages and winning the race today, hopefully. But you just never know, with it being Talladega, we might wreck on lap one. But yeah, I mean, our season’s been okay. I’ve learned a lot about the Cup side. I think that the Cup cars are getting a lot easier for me to drive and the understanding about them has been a little bit better. But it’s still a work in progress and something that during the offseason I’m going to have to really dive deep into to get a little bit better on these Cup cars.”
Yesterday in the Truck Series, there seemed to be some tire issues. You guys have the same change to your right sides. Do you guys have any concerns? I don’t know if you’ve had time to kind of debrief and talk about any changes in plans for today.
“I’m worried about it, for sure. My crew chief, Chad, he said he’s talked to Goodyear. They don’t think that it should be an issue for us today. They think that it was kind of self-induced with some of the Truck teams. But it’s been a long time since we’ve seen tire issues on a superspeedway, even if the Truck guys were doing something funky. So that part of it kind of worries me a little bit. I think it could change a little bit of our strategy going into at least the race starting stage one, you know, for the first pit stop to see kind of where we’re at on tires, how much tire wear we’re getting and that sort of thing.
But at the end of the day, I mean, we can’t race scared, and we just got to hope that the air stays in the tires. Goodyear does a great job each and every week, and we don’t normally have issues like this. So, hopefully, maybe there’s a little bit different recommendation that they can have on air pressure for today or something like that that could kind of help us if there is any issue at all.”
How would you kind of sum up this experience, overall, in the Cup car having to enter it after Kyle’s passing?
“Yeah, it’s been very eye-opening on just the transition from the O’Reilly car to the Cup car and how much different it is. And, you know, as I’ve kind of ran more and more each week, learning how the air works, the dirty air is a lot different in these cars than the O’Reilly car. I almost feel like it’s easier the times that I go run the O’Reilly car now on working the dirty air. The Cup car, it’s really tough with how the dirty air works. If you have your car set out to the left or set out to the right, or if you’re directly behind somebody on how bad the dirty air is on the Cup side; I think that that’s something that I’ve gotten a little bit better at, but it’s still something that I’m going to have to work on in the offseason and really look at a lot of data. I think restarts are a premium in the Cup car. If you can get four or five spots on a restart, even if your car falls off a little bit, it seems like you can kind of work the air a certain way and still kind of have a net gain if you have some good restarts. So that’s something that I’ve been really working on and trying to perfect over these last several weeks and still have a lot of work to do.
But it’s been an experience, that’s for sure, going back and forth between the two. I didn’t want to have this opportunity in the Cup car this way, but this is kind of here we are. You know, this is what life is now and I’m trying to make the most of it.”
Your O’Reilly Series drafting record speaks for itself. Does that door close after today or could we see you make select starts next year and in the future?
“I want to run next year. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to run or not for sure with sponsorship and such, but I do want to run next year. I’d love to run the Daytona race to start the year to try to go for whatever number it is, number five, or whatever it is. Obviously, Atlanta being my home track, I’d love to run Atlanta. And then, honestly, I’d like to throw some road course races even in there and run some road courses. Those are kind of my two types of tracks that I’d love to run next year. Don’t know if it’s going to happen, but I hope that this isn’t the last time that I run an O’Reilly Series race on a drafting track. I have a lot of fun with it. I’ve talked about it before, I used to hate superspeedway racing, and now, I have a lot of fun with it because I have a different mindset coming into these weekends. It’s not that with all the success that we’ve had that I just expect to go win today. It’s just that I just have a little bit more relaxed demeanor and I’m not as stressed out when I come to these events because I know that we could either win the race or we could end up on the hook or run anywhere in between. You just don’t know. There’s just so much uncertainty, and I’ve kind of gotten better at not thinking that way. I just think about going and doing my job and hope it’s enough at the end of the race and it’s worked out for us. So, hopefully, this isn’t the end for us.”
Back at Daytona, you guys had kind of the updated aero package, and now, you have a slightly different version of that same package. What is the level of unknowns kind of heading into this race, especially the differences between Daytona and Talladega?
“I don’t think there’s as many unknowns as there was when we ran Daytona a little while ago. I thought that we made a pretty good improvement from the times that I have ran the Cup car to when we just ran that Daytona race. There’s still a ways to go, and I think that doing what we’re doing with the spoiler and all is the next step for that. I don’t think that that’s going to be the full fix, but I could be proven wrong. I still think that there’s an area that we’ve got to work on, too.
I think, for us, to have better Cup racing, my opinion for the superspeedway stuff, is we’ve got to have some type of bubble effect out of the back of the car. That’s what makes the O’Reilly Series so good on the superspeedways is you have that bubble effect. You have to create your runs. You can’t just throttle up and drive into the back of somebody to create a run. You actually have to work at it and back up to the guy behind you; get connected with them, create that run, that sort of thing. You have to break through that bubble. On the Cup side, you don’t really have that. I know that that was something that we were working on for Daytona. I felt like we got closer in the sense of being able to run more single file stuff. We were able to have the top rolling and you could pull out a line and make moves if you needed to, if you had some guys lined up around you. There’s still an area that we’ve got to get that bubble effect. If we get that, and maybe this will be the fix, if we get that going into this weekend; I think the Cup racing will be just as good, if not better, than the O’Reilly Series.”
About General Motors
General Motors (NYSE:GM) is driving the future of transportation, leveraging advanced technology to build safer, smarter, and lower emission cars, trucks, and SUVs. GM’s Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, and GMC brands offer a broad portfolio of innovative gasoline-powered vehicles and the industry’s widest range of EVs, as we move to an all-electric future.
GM Motorsports, including the Cadillac Formula 1® Team develops and proves advanced technologies in the most demanding environments, accelerating innovation in performance, safety, efficiency, and electrification for its production vehicles. Cadillac Racing is one of the leading manufacturers in the IMSA and FIA World Endurance Championships (WEC). Chevrolet competes in single seaters in the US IndyCar series, and in NASCAR with multiple team partners and drivers. Corvette customer teams compete in GT series across the globe including IMSA and WEC. Learn more at GM.com.
