Hill shares what he needs to improve before full-time Cup gig in 2027
Austin Hill discusses which parts of his craft he thinks need work before his first full-time season at the NASCAR Cup Series level in 2027.
Video Transcript
What's lacking from your repertoire that you feel you really need to buckle down on before you go full-time cup racing?
Yeah, I mean, I It's a tough question just 'cause, I mean I, you know, we've, we've won at a lot of various different tracks, right, on the O'Reilly Series.
But the only thing that sticks out to me time and time again is, I would say like, you know, some of the short track stuff that we run.
Like, even though we've won at Martinsville with that chaotic finish that we won, and then I've had signs of running well at Bristol, just I'm either running top five-ish at Martinsville or Bristol, or I'm running like 20th.
Like, there's like no in between really.
It's, it's just kinda I think that's been our Achilles heel, as a team and, and maybe me as a driver.
Maybe I'm, you know, producing some of that, I'm not sure.
But, so I would say effort-wise, I probably put even more effort into when we go to short track racing, than I do anything else.
And I think that that's one area that going into the Cup level, you gotta be good at every single racetrack, right?
You gotta be good at various different things.
So I think that's something that I can work on, get better at.
And then figuring out the way these Cup cars are in the dirty air, that's one thing that's kinda caught me off guard, especially with the C3 package, that the car, Cup car runs on like the mile and a halves and stuff.
It is I mean, I think it's tough for everyone, but it's extremely tough for me right now on just how to position the car and the things that I need to do with the car on restarts and, you see guys, you know, they'll drive in really deep in the corner and they, they're not really trying to pass you, but they're trying to like drive close enough to you where they can like put dirty air on the car and like get dirty air underneath the diffuser and the next thing you know, you're like getting tight off the corner and having to lift.
Like all those things I'm still trying to learn on the fly, and I think throughout the rest of the season that's something that I really need to hone in on and get, get a lot better at is like how the dirty air and everything works to be better going into next year.
