{"id":35831,"date":"2025-07-31T02:22:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-31T02:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/35831\/"},"modified":"2025-07-31T02:22:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-31T02:22:11","slug":"nascar-insider-reacts-to-austin-hill-suspension","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/35831\/","title":{"rendered":"NASCAR insider reacts to Austin Hill suspension"},"content":{"rendered":"

Austin Hill and his 2025 Xfinity Series championship hopes took a big hit Tuesday. NASCAR<\/a> suspended\u00a0Hill for Saturday\u2019s HyVee Perks at Iowa Speedway for intentionally right rear hooking\u00a0Aric Almirola\u00a0in retaliation with 10 laps remaining in this past Saturday\u2019s race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.<\/p>\n

Per NASCAR\u2019s updated guidelines for playoff waivers, missing a race due to a suspension results in a loss of all playoff bonus points.\u00a0Hill will vacate his 21 playoff points up to this point \u2014 third most among drivers \u2014 and any he earns throughout the remainder of the regular season will not carry along with him to the postseason. It\u2019s a big penalty, though a \u201cjustified\u201d one, Jordan Bianchi of The Athletic said in a Dirty Mo Media<\/a> video.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s gonna be tough for Austin Hill in the playoffs, a championship favorite. He\u2019s got three wins this year [and] he\u2019s currently ranked fifth in points,\u201d Bianchi said. \u201cNow, he\u2019ll get a waiver to make the playoffs and that\u2019s fine, but his road to the Championship 4 is much harder now than it would have been before Saturday\u2019s incident. <\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026 This was a justified penalty. NASCAR got this one right. The caveat, of course, is the playoff points. NASCAR added that rule this year, and so that\u2019s really going to hit Austin Hill in the playoffs. You work all year during the regular season to get to bonus points that help you through each round. As we\u2019ve seen many times, those can be the big difference between advancing and being eliminated. Austin Hill is not going to have those to fall back on. This has championship implications but again, when you look at what happened, this was a deserved penalty for Austin Hill.\u201d<\/p>\n

Richard Childress Racing decides against appealing Austin Hill suspension<\/p>\n

Richard Childress Racing is not appealing the suspension<\/a>. They announced that Austin Dillon will pilot the No. 21 Chevrolet at Iowa. <\/p>\n

Hill, who finished 34th after serving a five-lap penalty, declined to speak with reporters after the race.\u00a0Richard Childress, however, delivered a fiery response to NASCAR. He\u00a0didn\u2019t believe his driver should have been suspended<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cHell no. They didn\u2019t do a damn thing to the 2 car [of\u00a0Austin Cindric] when they, he wrecked\u00a0Ty [Dillon]\u00a0and admitted to it,\u201d Childress said. \u201cDrove him in the right rear and wrecked him at COTA. It\u2019s who you are. We\u2019re a blue-collar team, they give us trouble all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Almirola felt it was clearly intentional. He described the hit as one of the hardest he\u2019s taken in his NASCAR career. Almirola hit the wall in Turn 3 head-on where there was no SAFER Barrier.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, it was definitely intentional,\u201d Almirola said. \u201cHe blocked me three times, and I finally got him loose into [Turn] 3. He had damage on the nose, so he was really slow in the corners. It was time to go. We\u2019re coming down to ten laps to go and the leaders are starting to put a gap on us. It\u2019s time to go, I got him loose, and he just turned left and hooked me in the right rear.<\/p>\n

\u201cHonestly one of the biggest hits in my entire NASCAR career. Very reminiscent of the hit I took when I broke my back.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Austin Hill and his 2025 Xfinity Series championship hopes took a big hit Tuesday. NASCAR suspended\u00a0Hill for Saturday\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35832,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":["post-35831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nascar","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}