It was easy for some people to ask "who" when Austin Hill crossed the finish line last week in the NASCAR Truck Series season opener at Daytona International Speedway.
It was even easier for some to suggest (or write) that he was simply the "ride-buyer" that forced reigning champion Brett Moffitt out of the Hattori Racing Enterprises No. 16 Toyota Tundra.
Both would be unfair insinuations.
After all, Hill didn't come out of nowhere if folks had been paying attention. In family-owned equipment, he earned five wins the K&N Pro Series East over three seasons spent racing against multi-car teams with greater resources.
And then, during his brief Truck Series tenure with the likes of Empire Racing and Young's Motorsports, he again overachieved, posting occasional top-10s with independent underdog squads.
"We've always had success in anything that we've raced, and a lot of people, if you don't look at my resume with what I've done with family-owned teams, you would probably think Austin Hill isn't a good driver, especially in the Truck Series.
"But I'm not going to tell you that I'm a good driver. I want the finishes to speak for themselves. Like last year, we did posted top-10s in mediocre equipment. We should have had more of them if not for some pit road issues and mistakes. But we closed out on a top five at Texas, and I feel like that was a statement. But again, I'm not going to tell you that I'm a good driver. I want to let the results say it."
And then there is the sentiment that Hill is a ride-buyer and that he is only in the No. 16 because he brought more money than Moffitt.
The reality was that Hattori Racing was at-risk of shutting down if it didn't find a driver that brought something, especially given that Moffitt brought very little funding and the team had to lay off employees in the middle of the year simply to complete its championship-winning campaign.
Hill feels like the business aspect of NASCAR is lost on some fans and observers. It also didn't hurt that Moffitt landed on his feet with GMS Racing.
"I really felt like if I didn't come in and get the Hattori ride, someone else would have," Hill said. "That's how I see it. Throughout the end of the year, I started to talk to (Hattori general manager) Mike Greci, probably with six races left in the season.
"He was trying to figure out what direction they were going to go next year and he asked me what my plans were. We exchanged number, we took it to United Rentals and they got on board. My game plan all along was to return to Young's. I never would have thought in a million years that we could get a ride with a team with the success of Hattori."
He also would have never thought in two million years that it would immediately pay off with a win at Daytona.
"That was definitely a huge win for us and it was a huge win for just the whole organization – my first race for Hattori," Hill said. "It makes that much easier coming into this weekend and having a little bit of momentum on our side for sure. Each race we’re going to look at it the same way. We’re going to go for wins and get as many stage points as we can and rack them up as much as we can going throughout the season."
That journey begins on Saturday at his home track — Atlanta Motor Speedway.
Austin Hill wins.
"Its over," @mikehermanjr says.
"WE JUST WON AT DAYTONA MOTHERFUCKERS," @_AustinHill screams
Hill charmed some fans, and polarized others, with his raw victory yell over the radio as he crossed the start-finish line last Friday night.
"We just won Daytona, mother (expletive)," he said in a transmission that was picked up by the FS1 TV broadcast.
Outside of some light ribbing by Greci, Moffitt says he didn't catch any criticism from sponsors for the moment of unfiltered joy.
"Greci called me Sunday and was asking if I went to church or not because of what flew on the radio," Hill said. "When something happens like that in your career, especially at Daytona, you’re full of so much emotion and you’re just so excited that stuff just happens that you don’t even realize it happened until after the fact.
"The next day, Saturday, I was thinking about it and I was like man, that probably wasn’t the best thing to say on the radio, but you’re so excited about winning Daytona, that was the last thing that was on my mind was what was being said on the radio. I was just overwhelmed. I never would’ve thought that Daytona would be a place that we’d win at, especially a restrictor plate race."
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