Austin Hill gets first Talladega win in Xfinity thriller

LINCOLN, Ala. — Austin Hill finally broke through for his first NASCAR Xfinity Series win at Talladega Superspeedway.

In the five Talladega races since Hill began racing Xfinity full-time in 2022, Hill had led the most laps (189 of the 566 laps) and earned both the most points (169) and poles (3) — but was missing a win.

Hill led 19 of 113 laps, taking the lead twice Saturday — to win stage two and to win the race. He held off Jeb Burton and Jesse Love in a three-wide photo finish under caution.

The caution fell for Connor Zilisch crashing hard on the backstretch. Love made a move on Zilisch for the lead, which Zilisch blocked — setting off the race-ending crash.

Medics treated and released Zilisch from the infield care center after he walked from his car to the ambulance with some back pain.

“It was one of those wrecks where you move your legs and make sure everything feels okay afterward. I’m very grateful to drive safe JR Motorsports race cars,” Zilisch said.

Love finished third and was upset about the wreck.

“I feel like I wrecked my best friend and I owe him an apology,” Love said.

After talking on pit road, Love went to check on Zilisch at the care center.

Zilisch appreciated it.

“It’s great. Jesse is probably my best friend in the world and I’m grateful to have someone like him who can come and stand in front of me and give me a hug after that,” he said.

Emotions also ran high for Jeb Burton, the other protagonist in the three-wide thriller. Burton, who has worked hard to get his own sponsors and give 110% in what he describes as his few chances to win, believed his hard work had prevailed from his perspective in the driver’s seat.

A review of multiple camera angles found it was not to be.

Raw from the emotions of the finish, Burton was honest about how he felt, protesting NASCAR’s decision on the finish but not losing sight of his team’s effort.

“I just appreciate my guys. They work really hard. We do a lot with the little team and appreciate Golden Corral, Celsius, State Water Heaters. Everybody that helps us we got a lot of supporters and I still look at the tire. I mean, I don’t know what’s so complicated there. So they need to go look at it. We’re gonna protest, if you can protest, do whatever the hell we can do because I think we won this race,” Burton said to The CW. “We don’t have a lot of chances to win so it’s really frustrating.”

Hill, Love, Burton, Justin Allgaier, Matt DiBenedetto, Anthony Alfredo, Blaine Perkins, Harrison Burton, Sheldon Creed and Daniel Dye were the top-10 finishers.

Jeremy Clements finished 26th after running the fastest lap of the race on lap 33 (49.640 seconds).