Restarts and receipts: How the fiery Hill-SVG feud got to this point

"Mr. Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: 'Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action.' " Ian Fleming’s Goldfinger was nowhere to be found in the Midway this past weekend, but there was no shortage of high stakes and high drama. We’re now past the point of happenstance and coincidence in the feud between Austin Hill and Shane van Gisbergen, a pair of road-course rivals whose burgeoning bristling spilled over into a hearty serving of Chicago beef this past weekend. That does not mean every bump and scrape between the two over the past three seasons has been intentional, but the file is thick enough now, and the war of words is only extending to where it can no longer be just chalked up to hard racing. What started as two aggressive road-course racers fighting for O’Reilly Auto Parts Series wins in 2024 has followed both drivers into the NASCAR Cup Series this season after Hill took over the No. 33 Chevrolet following Kyle Busch's death, where the feud has been spotlighted, and every restart and on-track battle between them now comes with a full -- and growing -- set of receipts. Sunday night at Chicagoland Speedway added the latest page. On Lap 48, van Gisbergen’s No. 97 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet made contact with Hill’s No. 33 Richard Childress Racing entry as they raced through Turns 3 and 4 while battling in traffic. Hill’s car shot into the outside wall, ending his day early and prompting a pointed response from the RCR camp and the Georgia native afterward. “I’m sure y’all have seen the replay,” he said. “So if I have to explain it, people probably need to get glasses.” Van Gisbergen, who continued and finished 25th, denied that the contact was retaliation. He said he was trying to get to the bottom for clean air, was tight and that Hill “chopped (his) nose” before Hill got into the wall. Before heading to the garage, Hill showed his own displeasure by sideswiping van Gisbergen’s car under caution. NASCAR reviewed the incident and issued no penalties to either driver in Tuesday’s penalty report. That closed the official infraction process. It did not, however, close the matter. RELATED: Chicagoland penalty report | NASCAR official explains no-penalty call During this week’s “Hauler Talk” podcast, NASCAR vice president of racing communications Mike Forde said officials reviewed data, radio transmissions, camera angles and prior laps involving Hill and van Gisbergen before determining nothing proved the Chicagoland contact was “100% intentional and penalty-worthy.” Forde also said NASCAR still planned to meet with both drivers this weekend at EchoPark Speedway to make sure the situation does not “boil over” into something larger. There is a reason for that -- because Chicagoland was not a one-off. The Hill-SVG history begins in earnest at Circuit of The Americas in March 2024, when both were still running in the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series. Van Gisbergen, early in his first full-time NASCAR season and still somewhat introducing himself to the field, had control of an overtime restart, but Hill stayed attached to his bumper up the hill into Turn 1 as SVG ran wide and the No. 21 moved into the lead. Van Gisbergen got back to Hill later on the final lap, using the front bumper into Turn 15 and pushing both cars wide. Kyle Larson slipped past both of them and drove away with the win. Hill finished second. Van Gisbergen crossed the line second but was later penalized 30 seconds for shortcutting the course, dropping him to 27th. Neither driver left COTA content. Van Gisbergen told FOX Sports that Hill “drove through me” in Turn 1 and said he “stood up for (himself).” Hill said from his perspective, van Gisbergen “just ran through us” into Turn 15. At that point, it appeared to be just a heated finish. Two months later, we all realized it was actually the ember that sparked a thing. [caption id="attachment_518280" align="alignright" width="2560"]Logan Riely | Getty Images[/caption] The next flashpoint came at Sonoma Raceway in June of that season. Hill led on a restart with 11 laps remaining and chose the left lane, with SVG alongside on the front row. Hill got the edge through Turn 1, but van Gisbergen had the inside line entering Turn 2. Contact followed, Hill slid wide, and van Gisbergen went on to win. Hill kept his public comments restrained but pointed, saying he would “leave it to the keyboard warriors” and later, “I plead the fifth.” The postrace cool-down lap was ... a bit less civil. As van Gisbergen celebrated with a lap-long burnout, Hill drove by and gave him a one-finger salute. Van Gisbergen later said the gesture changed the intent of his celebration from fan service to something more pointed, saying on Corey LaJoie’s “Stacking Pennies” podcast: “This is for (Hill) now, not the fans.” From there, van Gisbergen followed Hill around the course, eventually passing him and waving as the moment became one of the rivalry’s signature visuals. Van Gisbergen was more willing to connect the moment to COTA. Asked whether it was “fair game” after what had happened in Austin, van Gisbergen said, “One-hundred percent ... ” “ ... I hate racing and thinking like that, but to me, we’ve both taken a race win off each other now,” van Gisbergen said after Sonoma. From that moment, the rivalry became easier to label as such. COTA created the receipt, Sonoma cashed it, and this feud is still open for business. The beef quieted down a bit last year, but the history resurfaced when their paths crossed in the Cup Series as things heated up again this summer. Pocono Raceway added a tricky layer of frustration here as well, though not as straightforward as the incidents that came before and after it. During Stage 2 in last month’s race, SVG and Wood Brothers Racing’s Josh Berry made contact while racing off Turn 3 before Hill made it three-wide on the bottom. The stack-up sent Berry into the wall and triggered a chain reaction that collected several Chase hopefuls, including van Gisbergen, who finished 31st. A week later at Naval Base Coronado, the connection was a bit harder to miss. On a Lap 32 restart, Hill slid into Connor Zilisch entering the fast Turn 1, sending both cars into the fence. Van Gisbergen, who had little room to avoid the wreck, was collected in the pileup as both Trackhouse Racing entries were eliminated. Hill, Zilisch and van Gisbergen were credited with 36th through 38th. For SVG, the damage extended beyond the race car. San Diego was a major opportunity for him specifically, needing to maximize there with a Chase spot still very much up in the air. He left with one point, knowing exactly who to blame. Van Gisbergen was even more direct, saying he had been taken out “two weeks in a row” by the same “spud,” grouping San Diego with the Pocono crash a week earlier. The following week at Sonoma, van Gisbergen said it took him a couple of days to decompress and that he was “pretty pissed” about a strong opportunity gone. (Needless to say, he came out to Wine Country with a chip on his shoulder and stomped the field en route to victory.) Still, that backdrop followed both drivers to Chicagoland. From Hill’s side, the Lap 48 contact in the return to the 1.5-mile speedway looked obvious enough that he did not see much need to explain it. From SVG’s side, it was a racing incident caused by dirty air, a tight race car and Hill blocking his air. Over RCR’s radio, team owner Richard Childress viewed it as retribution. The radio traffic made clear how hot the No. 33 team was. Childress called it “payback for California,” while spotter Derek Kneeland referred to van Gisbergen as “Van Guggenheimer,” adding a little mispronunciation-fueled venom to the moment in a work of linguistic art fit for museum placement. RADIOACTIVE: Tempers flare on No. 33 team radio after SVG incident Van Gisbergen had his own jab afterward -- asked whether he would speak with Hill, he kept it short: “I’ll talk to him, but he just grunts.” From NASCAR’s side, however, it was not clear enough to warrant a penalty. That may be the most important piece entering EchoPark. NASCAR did not say nothing happened. Officials said they did not find enough to remove reasonable doubt and issue discipline. That leaves the feud in an uneasy middle lane: serious enough for a meeting between the sanctioning body and both drivers this weekend, not definitive enough for a deterrent penalty. It also leaves the door open, in theory, for escalation. And that is where Hill and van Gisbergen sit now. Two drivers with different racing backgrounds, different explanations of the same incident(s) and enough shared history that the next piece of contact cannot be judged on its own in a vacuum. The penalty report closed Chicagoland’s official review. It did not remotely close this Hill-SVG beef. [caption id="attachment_518281" align="alignright" width="2560"]Meg Oliphant | Getty Images[/caption]