In a span of 24 hours, Austin Hill went from hero to zero.
Twenty-one hours after winning Saturday’s O’Reilly Auto Parts Series race, Hill was leading the Anduril 250 coming out of a restart on lap 32 when he made a mistake in Turn 1 that took out Trackhouse Racing teammates Shane Van Gisbergen and Connor Zilisch — the odds-on, pre-race favorite and a 19-year-old phenom who earlier became the youngest driver in NASCAR Cup history to lead a lap on a road or street course.
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“Sorry, guys, I locked up the rear brakes,” Hill radioed his crew after overshooting the entrance to Turn 1 and forcing Zilisch into the outside wall.
At the restart, Zilisch had pulled up alongside and to the left of Hill while van Gisbergen briefly made it three-wide to Zilisch’s left. But as the leaders approached the right-handed bend of Turn 1, van Ginsbergen backed out while Zilisch set up with a good outside line into the turn.
But as Zilisch was preparing for the turn, Hill continued in a straight line, forcing Zilisch into the outside wall with van Ginsbergen crashing into the leaders.
The accident eliminated all three leaders. Hill was driving the Richard Childress Racing entry formerly driven by the late Kyle Busch.
Van Gisbergen and Zilisch had led 15 of the first 30 laps and were both in excellent position when it came to tire and pit-stop strategy.
“I was having a lot of fun,” said Zilisch. “I gave Austin room there and I got taken out. That wasn’t fun. We had a really fast car.”
Van Ginsbergen said he had “a pretty good run coming off the start, but I backed out of it because I didn’t want to be three-wide going into that turn.”
Van Gisbergen had claimed his sixth pole on a NASCAR road or street course Saturday. He had won four of the five road races that he started from the pole — leading to a joke in the garages that there needed to be a bounty out there to stop the New Zealander.
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“Hill missed the turn,” Carson Hocevar radioed his pits during the stoppage. “Van Gisbergen’s car is out. I guess Austin wins the bounty.”
“That accident raised everyone’s experience,” said Kyle Larson. “Guys started thinking they had a chance to win.”
The red flag was waved because Zilisch’s impact with the outside wall actually moved the barrier, forcing a track repair.
Notable
Before every NASCAR Cup race, Goodyear provides teams with a course chart showing the variations in grip. According to Goodyear representatives, Naval Base Coronado has a record number of grip variations as the cars travel across five different surfaces.
• El Cajon racing legend Jimmie Johnson finished 28th in the penultimate start of his NASCAR Cup career. “This was an interesting race,” said the seven-time NASCAR champion. “It was just an ever-changing environment. Every sector of the track had a different challenge to it. The grip levels, not only getting the power down but getting the car stopped. It was a very awkward and interesting rhythm required, but it was really a lot of fun when you got it right.”
• Eighteen-year-old Brent Crews took over for the injured Christopher Bell (broken wrist) as a substitute driver during the first round of pit stops. But his race lasted only 17 laps before the transmission failed.
• A couple other thoughts from drivers on the first NASCAR San Diego Weekend:
A.J. Allmendinger, who finished fifth: “I’ve been to a lot of great events. This might be the best one. It felt like there were 150,000 people here.”
Former NASCAR champion Jeff Gordon: “None of the first-time events I raced at during my career were like this.”
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