By Sarah Handy, Staff Writer
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla — “This was an incredible day for us.”
Those were the first words Timmy Hill spoke post race after capturing his best career finish of third in the NASCAR Xfinity Series season opener at Daytona.
Hill’s No. 66 was able to avoid a multitude of cautions throughout the afternoon, and be at the front of the pack in the final laps.
“This year is kicking off on a great note, making the Daytona 500 on Thursday was awesome, I didn’t think it could get any better,” Hill said.
“Third place was a nice finish. I thought we could’ve had a shot at the win, we had a plan in place for Harrison Burton there. Really proud of this team and this effort and it really feels good.”
Saturday afternoon’s Top-10 finish marks Hill’s fourth Top-10 in a superspeedway event in nine starts since 2011.
“A finish like this really adds confidence to our race team. We put a lot of effort together for speed weeks then we normally do and it obviously shows every time we come to Daytona and Talladega,” said Hill.
It added to Hill’s already great speed weeks when he qualified for his first Daytona 500 in his Thursday evening duel race for MBM Motorsports.
However, Saturday didn’t come without some controversy though after NASCAR handed down an L2-level penalty before qualifying.
The team was found to have manipulated the nose of the car.
NASCAR immediately suspended Crew chief Sebastian Laforge for six races and the team has been fined $50,000.
“It was a tremendous hit, that fine is really going to cost us severely money wise,” said Hill. “75 points is probably going to keep us in the negative points for at least three or four races.”
The Maryland native stated his emotions are really special right now.
“My wife’s here, my dad’s here, all my friends and family are here,” said Hill. “To have their support along with all my great sponsors that show up to this race, it’s just a really special feeling.”
Hill will compete in his first Daytona 500 tomorrow and he hopes some of the Cup guys saw what he was able to do today.
“Hopefully they saw some of the moves I made with guys and how steady I can be,” said Hill. “I’m going to need some help tomorrow. There’s no way for me to do it on my own, I’m going to do the best I can. But hopefully today’s effort could really propel us. I know the car can do it and I can do it, I just hope I can get some help.”