After a rain-soaked weekend in Daytona that saw the NASCAR Xfinity race delayed three times over Austin Hill would park his #21 Bennett Chevy into victory lane for the third straight season opener after a wild race.
The race started with the rookie Jesse Love on point and leading the first 23 laps before Daniel Suàrez got turned into the wall and spun onto the apron before coming up across the track. This incident would collect Hailie Deegan, Sam Mayer, and Kyle Weatherman as well. The rest of the stage then ran green with Love edging out his teammate Hill for the stage one win.
The second stage is where the chaos ramped up, though. AJ Allmendinger led the field to green to start the stage before Jesse Love got spun off of John Hunter Nemechek’s nose bringing out the caution on lap 38. This would collect a whole slew of cars such as Hill, Allmedinger, Shane Van Gisbergen, and Frankie Muniz ending the latter’s night.
Justin Allgaier led the field to the green flag on lap 43 before making contact with Cole Custer and spinning himself out down the backstretch. Custer would lead the field back to the green flag on lap 48 and be quickly passed by the teammate tandem of Parker Retzlaff and Jeb Burton. Retzlaff led one lap before getting shuffled out and Burton took the point before John Hunter Nemechek brought out another caution on lap 51. This time it would be for a cut tire in the tri-oval. The ensuing checkups to avoid his spinning Toyota resulted in Josh Bilicki getting spun off the nose of Dawson Cram’s car.
Burton would hold point as the race restarted on lap 57, but he would be quickly shuffled out as Hill would take point with a taped-up fender on his Chevy. He was challenged by his former teammate Sheldon Creed but was able to hold him off to win the second stage.
Hill incurred multiple pit road penalties on this round of pit stops and was forced to start at the rear after serving a stop-and-go penalty. This put Love on point to start the final stage of the race with a majority of his right front fender missing. He was not able to lead the line very well due to this aerodynamic disadvantage which led to Sammy Smith taking the lead. Smith would then be challenged by Riley Herbst as they would swap the lead leading the bottom and top lanes of the pack respectively.
The final round of green flag pit stops started at lap 46, where we saw an interesting strategy attempted by Natalie Decker, Ryan Ellis, and Garrett Smithley. They would attempt to run as long as possible and would lead for a while until a caution came out with 24 laps to go. Hill found himself on pit road again with what ended up being a flat rear tire that he was able to diagnose before it cost him his race. However, he would have to restart at the read of the field with less than 20 laps to go.
The race restarted with 18 laps to go with Ryan Sieg being challenged by Herbst on the backstretch as yet another caution was thrown. This time involving the cars of Burton, Van Gisbergen, Leland Honeyman Jr., and Jeremy Clements after Clements was turned by Retzlaff as they were fighting for position on the backstretch. The race restarted again and would have the same duo up front, but Herbst ended up costing himself his shot at victory with a restart violation. Before he could get to the pit road to serve his penalty, his teammate Cole Custer got into the wall and brought out the yellow flag with nine laps to go. This collected Sage Karam, Daniel Dye, Allgaier, and Brennan Poole as well.
With the chaos going on Hill had managed to get inside the top-five for the final restart with just three laps to go. He got past Chandler Smith and Jordan Anderson who were leading the two lanes at the restart, thus sealing his name among the greats in the Xfinity series as he won the Daytona opener for the third year in a row.
Final Top 10 results (unofficial):
1. Austin Hill
2. Sheldon Creed
3. Parker Retzlaff
4. Jordan Anderson
5. Chandler Smith
6. Riley Herbst
7. John Hunter Nemechek
8. Justin Allgaier
9. Brandon Jones
10. AJ Allmendinger
Photo Credit: @RCRracing on Twitter/X
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