Austin Hill’s second trip to Rossburg, Ohio’s Eldora Speedway ended with a 32nd-place finish after being involved in an incident on lap 64. With one race to go before the playoffs, Hill is ninth in the NASCAR Gander Truck Series championship standings and fifth on the provisional playoff grid.
Hill started and finished fourth in his heat race which placed him 19th on the starting grid for the feature event. On two of the three green flags during Stage 1, Hill started on the less-preferred bottom lane, but managed to gain positions to run 17th by end the of the caution-filled stage on lap 40. Crew chief Scott Zipadelli called Hill to pit road under the lap stage caution flag for tires and adjustments and restarted in 20th on lap 43.
At the beginning of the second stage, Hill began to methodically work the cushion against the outside wall and challenged for position inside the top-15. On lap 64, two trucks made contact and spun in front of Hill in Turn 1, blocking the racetrack, and Hill was unfortunately pushed into the incident which caused terminal damage to the United Rentals Toyota Tundra. Hill retired after 79 laps due to the damage.
Austin Hill Quote:“It was definitely a tough night for sure. We got our United Rentals Tundra going in the right direction and having a pretty fun time after the first stage and thought we were on pace to get into the top-10. The 51 looked like he got tangled up into (turn) one, and by the time I got there we just had nowhere to go. All these guys have been putting in a ton of hours on our trucks, and I’m ready to go to Michigan and get some positive results back on our side for all these guys.”
HRE PR
