And now for something completely different.
With the NASCAR Truck Series racing at Homestead-Miami Speedway, Timmy Hill is also in Florida but on the complete-opposite side of the state near the Alabama border to compete in the ARCA East opener at Five Flags Speedway in Pensacola.
This is what his family-operated Hill Motorsports is focused on this season — the pursuit of wins and a championship on the ARCA platform.
Something different.
“As we started wrapping up the Truck Series season last year, we were pretty convinced that we were going to try something new the next year,” Hill told Sportsnaut on Saturday. “We didn’t want to fall into doing just another year.
“We had a big inventory of (Trucks) and never wanted to leave that series but we wanted to explore other avenues of racing. The Xfinity Series was on our minds. ARCA was on our minds. For us, Xfinity kind of fell off the map when we couldn’t find the cars we needed to feel like we could do it well.
“At that point in time, the ARCA East schedule came out and those eight races were something we could commit to pretty easily for our families and I thought the tracks were interesting.”
To that end, they have built an ARCA car from the ground up, which is something they have always wanted to do but never had the chance to having always purchased used equipment from other teams or had a customer program.
In this case, they worked hand-in-hand with AM Racing to build their own chassis and Shannon Bryant at SB Fabrication to build a body.
“They killed it,” Hill said. “This thing turned out really nice. We look at ARCA as two things: It’s a chance to go out and have success, compete for wins and a championship against some really good competition …”
Of course, it’s not totally different as his dad, Jerry Hill, made 54 ARCA starts over the 1990s but what is different is a chance to win races. He has a runner-up at Daytona in the 2022 summer race behind Jeremy Clements and a third-place two years prior. He has a top-5 in his own truck at Martinsville in 2019 too.
But he hasn’t won.
“I’ve done a lot of things in my career and when we talked about what we wanted to do this year, I said I wanted to win,” Hill said. “I’ve raced in the Cup Series and Xfinity, participated in everything you can imagine but I haven’t won.
“I have some seconds and top-5s and that’s big for a family team but this gives us a chance to go win. There are not as many Cup affiliated resources as there is in Trucks or Xfinity so I do think a family team like ours can compete.
“This is a new car so it’s not going to be easy but I really feel strongly about the opportunity we have to do something that I haven’t been able to do in 15 years.”
And that mission starts on Saturday night at Five Flags. From there, if it’s a success, Hill isn’t against racing in ARCA national or starting a driver development program but he needs it to be rewarding in a way the past couple of years was not.
“I want to have fun with this, and enjoy it,” Hill said. “It was getting to be such a grind over the last couple of years. I think we were all just participating and not having fun. I lost some of my passion.
“As far as growth, I told my guys that as soon as we build this car, I would love to do more, maybe some national races. I don’t know how long that would take because this one took awhile to come together and maybe doing it again would be faster.
“I would love the opportunity to coach some guys and race on the national tour but we want to do it right, be competitive and I want it to be something we can be passionate about.”
