HAMPTON, Ga. — In the vernacular of his native Georgia, Austin Hill is a big boy. At 6-foot-2, he has the build of a linebacker and looks like a giant when standing beside most of his competitors.
“The guys at RCR (Richard Childress Racing) have done a really good job of getting the right seat and getting everything that I need to have,” Hill said. “If you look in the car, it does make you wonder how I fit into the thing, but they do a great job making me feel comfortable inside the car. I mean, it’s been good enough to be able to do what we’ve done.”
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And what they’ve done is a lot. Hill has won 15 NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series races in RCR Chevrolets. Eleven of those wins have come on the drafting tracks of Daytona International Speedway, Atlanta’s EchoPark Speedway and Talladega Superspeedway, courses where Hill typically is a prohibitive favorite. His most recent win was scored last week at Daytona, where masterful blocking earned Hill his fourth win at the track.
Hill’s continued O’Reilly success — particularly at bigger tracks like Daytona and Talladega, where publicity often is more widespread — brings up the obvious question: When will he fold himself full-time into a NASCAR Cup Series car?
“The angle has always been to run Cup and at least give it a shot for two or three years,” Hill said, “but I’m having a lot of fun where I’m at at RCR and having a lot of fun in this series. If the right opportunity presents itself to go run Cup, I would definitely entertain that.”
Hill clearly enjoys his status as a big fish in a smaller pond, and his abilities are respected throughout the O’Reilly garage. In a media availability Friday, four JR Motorsports drivers — Justin Allgaier, Rajah Caruth, Carson Kvapil and Sammy Smith — spent much of the session trying to explain what makes Hill so difficult to beat, particularly on drafting tracks.
“Right now I’m fully committed to this series,” Hill said. “I’m having a lot of fun in that these cars are way more fun to drive than the Cup car, in my opinion. The Cup car is a lot of fun on the road courses, but on the oval-style stuff, it’s just that the O’Reilly Series is just where it’s at for me.
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“I hope to try to make it in Cup, but, if not, I can kind of be the Allgaier of this series.” Hill referred to Allgaier, who has fashioned an excellent career running 15 years in O’Reilly, scoring 28 wins and tallying a championship.
Hill has won five times at EchoPark Speedway, the site of Saturday’s Bennett Transportation & Logistics 250 (5 p.m. ET, The CW, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio), the second race of the 2026 season.
“It’s extremely hard to win here, but we’ve made it, I guess, look easy at times,” Hill said. “It’s anything but that.”