NASCAR’s truck series is all business for driver Austin Hill as Kansas Speedway beckons

It is the business side of auto racing most fans don’t see.

In the midst of winning the 2018 NASCAR Gander Outdoors Trucks championship, Hattori Racing Enterprises was hemorrhaging money and forced to lay off employees, including driver Brett Moffitt, who had won six races en route to the title.

Before Hattori was about to close up shop, here came driver Austin Hill, who, along with some untapped driving skills, brought a sponsor, United Rentals, and revived the No. 16 Toyota team for 2019.

Hill then validated his place behind the wheel with his new team by winning the season-opening race at Daytona. So much for the skeptics who said Hill simply “bought his way” into the ride.

All Hill, 25, needed was someone to take a chance on him after he enjoyed success in family-owned equipment at lower levels of stock-car racing.

“There have been plenty of times I’ve tried to talk to big teams … JR Motorsports, people like that, when I was 17, 18 years old,” Hill said. “I tried to talk to Kyle Busch Motorsports when I was 18. The response I got was ‘bring money to the table’.

“They didn’t really look at the talent side of it. They just looked at how many dollars you could bring. That’s the bad thing about our sport. There’s a lot of talent out there that should get a shot and doesn’t, and there are a lot of guys I feel shouldn’t be in the series, and they’re in good equipment and able to run decent.”

Since winning at Daytona, Hill has had two seventh-place finishes — at Atlanta and at Dover last week — in five starts. He’ll enter Friday night’s Digital Ally 250 at Kansas Speedway eighth in the standings and by virtue of the win at Daytona, Hill is virtually guaranteed a spot in the post-season playoffs.

“Obviously, you’ve got to go out there and perform when you’re coming off a championship team, so going to Daytona and getting a win with those guys definitely meant a lot,” he said.

“It lets you relax the rest of the season. We get to go out there and go for wins and take some chances we might not be taking if we hadn’t won a race. We’ve shown a lot of speed throughout the season. We’ve had some overheating issues that we’re trying to get figured out, and once we get it figured out, we’re going to have some shots at more wins.”

Hill was glad to see that Moffitt landed on his feet with another team, GMS Racing and is fourth in the standings after a second-place finish last week at Dover.

“This sport is a cut-throat sport,” said Hill, whose team requires about $2.4 million to run a full season. “It’s whoever can get with the right team at the right time and bring sponsorship. All those things have to come together. I’m glad he got his shot to defend this title. I hate it for him, but Hattori had to look at the money side of it. Who was going to pay the bills to keep the doors open, and we were going to make it happen.”

A year ago, driving for underfunded Young’s Motorsports, Hill posted six top-10 finishes, plus a 12th at Kansas Speedway, and finished 11th in the standings.

“With the team I was with last year, a top 10 at Kansas would have been phenomenal,” he said. “We were trying to stretch fuel. We were running third and ran out of fuel with like three laps to go. I have confidence on this track, and with the team I’m with this year, we’re going to have a shot at it.”