Since moving to full-time NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series racing in 2022, Austin Hill has defined consistency. It catapulted him to the 2023 Regular Season Championship as a sophomore.
That consistency, however, is missing through the first 14 races of the 2026 season, despite winning the season opener at Daytona International Speedway for the fourth time in five years. Last weekend at Dover Motor Speedway, the No. 21 team banked its first top-five finish since Circuit of The Americas, snapping a 10-race drought, the longest of Hill’s O’Reilly career.
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“It’s been one of those roller coaster starts to the season,” Hill told NASCAR.com. “We haven’t performed like we should. The entire 21 team knows it. We’ve shown signs of good runs.
“I think there’s light at the end of the tunnel. We are still a contender; we’re still a top-five team each and every time we go on the race track. It’s just putting these races together, minimizing our mistakes on the track and minimizing things that have happened with the race that the outside world doesn’t see, but we see it. If we can clean all that stuff up, I think you will see us back inside the top five in points, and you will see us back up front, contending to win races.”
With the fifth-place effort at the “Monster Mile,” Hill sits 50 points below Brandon Jones for that benchmark. He trails Sammy Smith by only three points for sixth in the championship standings.
Hill sees promise within the No. 21 team as it attempts to climb back to the top. He placed sixth at Martinsville Speedway, a track he normally wrestles with. On the flip side, Bristol Motor Speedway continues to be a hindrance for Richard Childress Racing. Intermediate venues, where Hill typically excels, have been spotty.
“Our expectations for the 21 is to be winning races,” Danny Lawrence, RCR’s vice president, alliance operations director, O’Reilly Auto Parts Series, told NASCAR.com. “Nobody is happy when you don’t win. Our biggest focus right now is execution across the board. The speed has been there from time to time. We just need to execute better.”
Despite the abnormal start for Hill, his average finishing position is only 0.3 positions worse than a rough-and-tumble 2025 season. But the highs were higher in previous seasons, reaching double-digit top fives in all four years and never having fewer than 18 top-10 finishes. He is on pace to have career lows in both categories.
That is aggravating for a driver who has made a living being steady.
“It’s been very frustrating and mentally taxing on me as a driver,” Hill said. “Just because I had these big talks about liking that we were going this route with The Chase format, and that consistency was going to be huge, and that would work well for our 21 team. To start the season off earlier in the year, I’m like, this is the 21 team, this is what we do, we run inside the top five every week. Then, it slowly digressed.
“I think it’s starting to come back around for us. I still do think the way the format is, it’s going to benefit our team and how we perform every week. You’re going to have these slumps, and we’re going through a little bit of a slump. I’d rather have it early in the season like we’re having it now than later in the year when The Chase comes.”
The O’Reilly dip extends throughout the RCR camp, which includes defending champion Jesse Love and the No. 2 team, with only a pair of top fives in the last 10 events. This is in addition to the challenges within the RCR walls on the Cup side. Of late, however, the Cup program at RCR has found an uptick in speed, with both full-time drivers finishing inside the top 10 at Watkins Glen International.
Team spirit has been put through the wringer in the opening three months of the NASCAR season, but Lawrence is optimistic the legacy team can turn it around.
“We’re not in panic mode,” Lawrence said. “I think you’re going to see the progression. Top fives are great, but it’s not what we want. We want to be winning. Our plan is for Austin Hill and Jesse to win nine races each. We’re going to keep working on it and pushing hard.”
MORE: O’Reilly Auto Parts Series standings | O’Reilly Auto Parts Series schedule
To have a legitimate shot at the 2026 title, Hill believes he needs to rank inside the top five in points. That would put him within striking distance of Justin Allgaier, who is currently on a runaway with the Regular Season Championship, two-and-a-half races ahead of second-place Sheldon Creed. The next O’Reilly race is slated for Saturday at Charlotte Motor Speedway (5 p.m. ET, The CW, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
“To be comfortable, a bare minimum fifth,” Hill said. “I would still be disappointed in that, but bare minimum, we need to be fifth for when we get done with the regular season and go into The Chase. Perfect case would be somewhere in the top three. I still think that’s obtainable and reachable.
“There are a decent amount of races coming up that we have left to do, and if we can do what we think we can do and start being consistent each week, and some other guys start having some issues, it could bring us right back into it.”