By Jerry Jordan, Editor
As first reported by Catchfence.com, Hattori Racing Enterprises confirmed today that it will be returning to the NASCAR Xfinity Series and have Austin Hill as its driver next week at Daytona International Speedway.
“You always want to move up the ladder, and I can’t wait to get in the car. I honestly never thought I’d have this opportunity.,” Hill said. “All thanks goes to Shige and AISIN Group. They’ve been working on this a while and it’s a big deal for all of us to put a program together to race the Supra. We have a great team here, and it’s going to make the transition a lot smoother working with Scott (Zipadelli) and entire truck series team. We set the bar pretty high for ourselves at Daytona, so hopefully, we can have the same success as we did in February.”
Word of the move came to light over the weekend at Iowa Speedway and Hill said at the time that he was very excited about the news. However, he was somewhat reserved because the finalities of the deal hadn’t been formalized.
Today, Shige Hattori said he believes this opportunity will give Hill even more experience and help his truck series efforts. This is the truck series championship team’s first time back in NXS since 2015.
“We’re very excited to return to the Xfinity Series,” Hattori said. “The Toyota Supra is extremely important to our partners and very popular in Japan and we want to be part of the Supra program in NASCAR. It’s exciting for our team to compete in the Xfinity Series at Daytona, especially after winning there earlier this year. Austin has done a good job in the truck so far and this will be good to get him more experience.”
There is no word on how many Xfinity Series races the team will run but the organization is looking to add more runs this season.