By: Zach Catanzareti, Staff Writer
Austin Hill returned to Xfinity Series competition Saturday at Watkins Glen International and he left in the heat of controversy.
Both incidents occurred while racing up front, with two drastically different outcomes.
The first happened on a restart with 12 laps to go, where Hill made an inside move on leader Connor Zilisch in an attempt to take the lead. And while Zilisch backed up his entry to avoid contact, Hill was unable to avoid contact.
Zilisch’s No. 88 Chevrolet went wide in Turn 1, forfeiting numerous spots as Hill grabbed the lead.
“I hadn’t restarted in the first two rows all day,” Hill said. “I was going to my normal 400-yard brake marker that I was using all day on restarts. I was trying to get it slowed down.
“Honestly, I wanted to touch him just to show him, ‘Hey I’m here.’ But I wasn’t trying to ship him off in the corner like I did.”
A quick debris caution led to another restart, where Hill lost the lead and fell to finish fourth.
“If it stayed green, it would have worked out fine for us,” he said. “Me and [Zilisch] have raced each other clean.”
But that incident was not where the issues ended for Hill and much of the field.
With four laps to go, Hill was closely trailing second-place runner and Cup Series regular Michael McDowell while Zilisch gapped out his lead.
Exiting the track’s carousel corner on the back-half of the lap, Hill nosed his No. 21 Richard Childress Racing to the left side of McDowell’s No. 11, which turned the latter as they approached the grass.
A grinding crash erupted and, right or wrong, Hill was seen in the red at first glance.
For him, however, he saw it as a racing incident and knows intent was not present.
“Just two guys going for it. Nothing malicious, as much as everybody wants to sit there and make it more than it is,” he said. “It was just two guys racing it out. I was trying to get by the [No.] 11 as quick as I could because the No. 88 was driving away from us. I thought we could maybe have a shot at racing with him and race for the win.
“I had a massive run off the carousel and I was trying to catch him off guard and get to his left side. I was definitely to his left side, and that was after I had lifted.
“The grass was coming up in front of us, I had to get to the right. I was hoping he was going to move to the right and give me some room and it just didn’t happen.”
The crash was brutal and led to a 45-minute red flag. Hill survived the incident and managed his fourth road course top five of 2025.
“If everybody wants to blame me for it, I’ll take the blame for it,” he said. “I could have lifted and lived to fight another corner, unfortunately, that’s not what happened and it wrecked a lot of racecars.
“I didn’t want to come back from what we had going on the last two weeks and have this happen, but it’s racing.”