Austin Hill finished the 2014 NASCAR K&N Pro Series East season with back-to-back wins in the year’s final races at Greenville Pickens Speedway and Dover International Speedway. Despite the all-new NASCAR K&N Pro Series race car chassis and body, Hill managed to continue this momentum into the 2015 NASCAR K&N Pro Series East season opener at New Smyrna Speedway just south of Daytona International Speedway.
Austin Hill is part of the 2014-15 NASCAR Next program designed to help promote young drivers in the NASCAR national and touring series. Hill made his debut in the in the NASCAR K&N Pro Series East at Columbus Motor Speedway in 2012 and recorded his first win in September of 2013. It took another year before Hill claimed the top spot in a NASCAR K&N Pro Series East race and it seems as if that win may have given him the confidence he needed to chase down a NASCAR championship.
Hill’s 2015 season got off to an excellent start when he claimed his first 21 Means 21 Coors Light Pole Award for his qualifying time of 18.483 seconds at 93.491 miles per hour. He took this push with him as the race began on the .48-mile high-banked oval race track just south of Daytona. Hill would go on to lead all 150 laps of the race, with only a small challenge coming from rookie Dalton Sargeant on a restart. “I was getting worried on the restarts, five laps was about when my car would really start to get up and really go,” Hill said. “So about five laps I would have to hold them off and then it would finally get going.”
