Everyone ran out of gas and Austin Hill won the NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Atlanta Motor Speedway because of course he did.
There were countless ways the Raptor Tough 250 could have played out differently, but for the second week in a row, Hill and the Richard Childress Racing No. 21 defied a race where numerous obstacles were thrown their way.
It was like Daytona all over again.
Hill was around the top-five all race but just didn’t feel like his car was as into the race track as some of the competition, vernacular for overall grip and ride quality, a reflection of the three-year old surface starting to give up its form.
Then came the final stint, single file and no one able to form a second line, due to how draggy this rules package is for the Xfinity Series. It was highly unlikely that the race would work out for Hill because he was too far back to even lead a successful second line.
So, any version of them winning the race would come down to fuel conservation discipline.
With three laps left, second place Riley Herbst ran out of fuel alongside Stewart Haas Racing teammate Cole Custer, who was also in the top-10. Ryan Sieg also ran out of fuel to trigger the caution. Hailie Deegan and several others followed suit to extend it.
Because cars kept running out of fuel and needing a tow back to pit road, six total laps were added under caution, before the overtime effort.
The leaders who stayed out: Jesse Love, who led all but 10 laps of regulation, ahead of Ryan Truex, Parker Kligerman, Sam Mayer and Hill.
Literally all of them ran out of fuel with the exception of Hill, who drove on to the win, but probably did his part more than anyone can truly comprehend.
“When they told me to stop saving, I went ahead of put another few laps in the reserve bank, because you never know how these overtimes work,” Hill said. “We had enough fuel but it was sputtering on the restart, I’ll tell you that.”
So how did we get to this point? Like, Herbst was told he was good on fuel with 25 laps to go but that Love was borderline. His response was ‘okay, I’m going to push here,’ and Herbst thinks he ultimately ran them both out of fuel.
“I’m surprised we ran out, but I also have a little indication of why we ran out,” Herbst said. “I feel like, when I was trying to push (Love) for him to run out, I feel like we ran the whole field out. Like, if we just rode there, the whole field would have been alright.”
Kligerman ran out in Turn 3 coming to the green flag and he feels like he forced Herbst to run out of fuel in running Hill out of fuel. Hill sputtered taking the green too.
“With like 25 to go, we had saved the whole time, and felt like those guys were in a tough spot,” Kligerman said. “So Patrick (Donohue, crew chief) came over the radio and said ‘go force them.’ We started going a half second a lap faster.
“That was precipitated from us and felt like that was working out for us if not for all the caution laps.”
What’s craziest about the top-five is the number of laps since each driver took fuel. It had been 86 laps since Hill pit. Chandler Smith, Shane Van Gisbergen, Sheldon Creed and Parker Retzlaff all top off during the final caution.
SVG earned his first podium out of it all!
“I guess it’s really impressive to me that the 21 made it because he didn’t pit at all so hopefully I can have access to his on-board to see what he was doing to make it,” said SVG. “I thought I was saving fuel but I do think it was the right call to pit.”
Van Gisbergen, despite being so new to this, has the same questions everyone does.
How did Hill make it when everyone around him was playing fuel conservation or fuel pressuring games? For one, he was oblivious to all this stuff going on around him.
“I wasn’t aware of anyone’s fuel at the time of the green flag,” Hill said. “But once the caution came out, we started talking about it. They started telling me this guy was short, this guy was short and this guy is close or whatever.
“We were just doing our own deal. I wasn’t worried about anyone around me. All I knew is that (Brandon Jones) kept laying off me. I knew (Kligerman) kept laying off me towards the end of the race to get a run and I kept running half-throttle, sometimes quarter throttle on entry, and sometimes 100 percent off throttle and dragging brake to not run guys over.
“I knew there were games being played up front. I knew (Riley) was pushing pretty hard and pushing (Love) pretty hard so I knew there was some of that going on. We never talked about it. I have this kind of memory bank is what I call it, and I was just putting it in the memory bank of what each driver was doing. … “There was a lot of mental games and it just came down to fuel, obviously. We had enough and I made the right move to go middle on the green-white-checkered and it was watching the mirror, and fingers crossed that we didn’t run out.”
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.