Fresh off his first-career road course victory in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series last weekend, Austin Hill’s summer road trip continues with his debut on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS) road course. The driver of the No. 61 AISIN Toyota Supra has perfected his road race craft this season, with a career-high five road course starts between the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series and ARCA Menards Series. Hill is fresh off his first-career road course victory last week at Watkins Glen International (WGI) and looks to keep his summer road trip in high gear at IMS with his third NASCAR Xfinity Series start of 2021.
White Hot … Hill enters his third NXS start of the season white hot and on one of the most impressive streaks of his career. Not only did the Winston, Ga. wheelman capture the win at WGI in the Camping World Trucks’ season finale, but he’s coming off back-to-back victories after his first-career dirt triumph at Knoxville Raceway on July 9th. Hill got a full dose of road course action at “The Glen” last weekend as he also finished second in the ARCA race. He has a pair of runner-up finishes in ARCA competition this season, the other occurred on June 4th at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course.
Season to Date … Saturday’s 150-mile battle on IMS’ 2.43-mile layout will mark Hill’s second NXS road course start. . Hill has made two NXS appearances this season at Nashville Superspeedway and Pocono Raceway, scoring his best finish of ninth in “Music City”. On the Camping World Trucks side of the garage, Hill will start the playoffs second in the championship standings by virtue of his two victories and one stage win in the last two races. He has scored seven top-five and 12 top-10 finishes in the 15 races thus far, and his average finish of 8.9 is third among full-time competitors.
Chassis Selection … Crew chief Dave McCarty and the AISIN team have built chassis No. 005 for Hill’s debut on the IMS road course. This Toyota Supra is new to the HRE fleet and is purpose-built for road course competition.
Tune In … NBC Sports Network will carry all on-track activity from Indianapolis. NBCSN coverage will begin on Friday evening with a 50-minute practice session at 5:30 p.m. ET. Qualifying will air at 10:00 a.m. ET on Saturday morning followed by the green flag at 4:00 p.m. ET. Stay connected with the No. 61 AISIN team by following @Hattori_Racing on Twitter, @hattoriracing on Instagram, and Hattori Racing Enterprises on Facebook.
Austin Hill Quote:On making his debut on the IMS road course:“I’ve always loved road course racing, even going back to my legends car days, and after last week I love it even more. We’ve put a lot of effort into road racing this year at HRE with doing a couple ARCA races and now a couple races on the Xfinity schedule with our AISIN Toyota Supra. Indy is always a special place, no matter what layout you get to compete on, and the road course will be a big challenge this weekend. There’s quite a few long straightaways that lead into hard braking zones which is a little different from some of the places we’ve race at on the truck side. There looks to be quite a few opportunities to make passes each lap in the braking zones, so it’ll be nice to work on our AISIN Supra and figure out what we need in that practice on Friday afternoon.”
HRE PR
