Just because NASCAR didn’t issue penalties following the contact between Austin Hill and Shane van Gisbergen last week at Chicagoland, they’re making it clear that they need it to stop by calling the two Chevrolet drivers into a closed-door hauler meeting before track activity at Echopark Speedway in Atlanta on Saturday.
The latest in a running saga of on-track incidents between Hill and van Gisbergen happened last Sunday when, on lap 48, van Gisbergen’s No. 97 Trackhouse Chevrolet made contact with Hill’s Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet. The Trackhouse driver was going for a pass through turns three and four and ran in hard, sending Hill’s No. 33 into the wall.
“Somebody should talk to NASCAR about that; that was blatant,” team owner Richard Childress said over the radio as Hill came to the pits.
Also over the radio, Hill shared that he was sure it was intentional and, after a few failed attempts by his spotter, Derek Kneeland, to get his driver to cool down, not share his thoughts and “think of the bigger picture”, Hill returned to the race track under caution and sideswiped van Gisbergen. Hill then retired from the race; van Gisbergen continued on and finished 25th.
On Tuesday, when the NASCAR penalty report came out, neither driver was cited. Mike Forde, NASCAR’s VP of racing communication, said later in the week on NASCAR’s official podcast “Hauler Talk” that officials had deemed the contact of van Gisbergen on Hill as “100% intentional and penalty-worthy,” leading to them calling both drivers into a meeting ahead of racing action at Atlanta.
Following the closed-door meeting, van Gisbergen was among the drivers in this week’s media scrum, and the bulk of his questions stemmed from the official conversation and his first time being called into an official NASCAR mediation.
This was one of two driver mediations NASCAR called for this weekend, with Zane Smith and Carson Hocevar also being called to the hauler for their contact at Chicagoland last weekend.
“I’ve been here long enough to know how it works, I guess, but also still learning as well,” van Gisbergen said in the Atlanta media center. “It’s my first time in the hauler. One person seems more remorseful and like he can move on than the other. Yeah, it’s hard. I don’t really have much to say, but yeah, I’m happy, but obviously I’ve got the most to lose, and he doesn’t. So who knows?”
When asked to clarify if he meant he was the remorseful driver, van Gisbergen said: “Of course.”
“I was racing hard, and the outcome wasn’t what I wanted, but I intended to run in there hard and hopefully get inside him, and it didn’t work out,” van Gisbergen said. “I definitely didn’t want to wreck a race car, and I definitely didn’t want to escalate. I don’t really know if it’s rivalry, but whatever it’s been between us the last three years, we never seem to race well together. So obviously I don’t want to escalate it. I’m the one with a lot to lose.”
While this was van Gisbergen’s first official run-in with NASCAR over intentional wrecks, it was far from Hill’s first; nearly a year ago was on the receiving end of NASCAR’s most powerful penalty.
Following the then Xfinity Series race at Indianapolis, the weekend of the Brickyard 400, Hill was involved in a crash with Aric Almirola.
In retaliation for Almirola causing him to lose control when he got to his rear bumper, Hill slammed into Almirola’s quarter panel, sending him spinning. In the race, Hill was handed a five-lap penalty.
Following the race, NASCAR went further, slapping Hill with a suspension and stripping him of the playoff points he had earned during the regular season.
“We’re going to go race,” Hill answered when asked by Lee Spencer of Sirius XM what was next. “I’m looking forward to it.”
Hill followed up, saying he hopes that this is the end.
When van Gisbergen was sharing his side of the meeting, he explained that hard racing and some allowed self-medication are two of the things that brought him over to NASCAR from Supercars, he not convinced that Hill is over what happened between them.
“I think what’s been cool about the sport is you can kind of sort it out yourselves, and I guess it gets to that point. And to me it’s at that point, but to him it’s not.”
Showing that there’s still no love lost between the racers, van Gisbergen goes in on Hill’s mentality not to end this rivalry when he feels he’s down a swing.
“He’s the kind of personality, I guess, who feels like he’s got to get the last laugh or the last one to strike. And he threatened that, I guess. But yeah, it’s what it is. So I try and race clean and do my own thing, but I guess he’s on his own agenda.”
Austin Hill races Saturday night in the O’Reilly Series, where he’s competing for the championship, and Sunday in the No. 33 RCR Chevrolet that he took over following Kyle Busch’s death this spring.
This will be Hill’s second career Cup Series start at his winningest track. Hill has won at Atlanta in the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series five times in nine attempts. He qualified 30th.
Van Gisbergen will only race on Sunday at the track that held his best oval finish of sixth before doing one spot better earlier this summer at Nashville for his first career top five on an oval track. He’ll start the race in 12th.
Victoria Beaver is a nomadic sports writer who spends her time hopping between race tracks and hippie farms. She’s covered every corner of motorsports that will let her in from 410 Sprints to NASCAR to Supercross. Her daily driver is a 2010 Subaru that she refused to do the smallest amount of preventative maintenance on. Instead, she spends her free time and money building a 42-foot Skoolie to one day travel the country full time.