On Saturday, Oct. 18, Austin Hill won the NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Talladega Superspeedway. It shouldn’t have been a big surprise to anyone. He now has 10 wins at the drafting-style racetracks of Talladega, EchoPark Speedway near Atlanta, and Daytona International Speedway.
Hill boasts 14 career Xfinity Series victories, multi-win seasons for all four full-time NXS campaigns, and top 10 points finishes in seven straight years of NASCAR national series competition.
As such, Hill’s prowess on drafting-style racetracks, as evidenced by Shane van Gisbergen, would make him a prime candidate for a full-time NASCAR Cup Series ride, right? He also has backing from Bennett Transportation, a desirable commodity in racing.
Except the answer, for the 31-year-old, is no. No, Hill is not a prime candidate for a Cup ride, even if more seats were available this offseason.
Wait … why? He drives for Richard Childress Racing, which recently announced reigning Xfinity championship-winning crew chief Jim Pohlman will helm the No. 8 Chevrolet in 2026. That ride, currently piloted by Kyle Busch, could have an opening when Busch becomes a free agent after that season.
Hill, therefore, would be a logical in-house choice.
But his Xfinity successes have not translated into similar Cup performances.
Hill has 15 career Cup starts, and the results have been middling. His only top 10 came at the Chicago street course earlier this year, and SVG has been superior over the field on that type of circuit.
In six Cup appearances on drafting-style tracks, Hill has one top 20, a 14th in the second Daytona 2023 event.
In fact, that result, his top 10 at Chicago and 18th in his series debut at Michigan International Speedway are his only top 20s. Three out of 15 is a 0.200 top-20 batting average. That’s not going to cut it in the major leagues.
Sure, RCR could field him in more Cup races – this upcoming race at Martinsville Speedway only has 37 entrants so he would make the field. But is that really going to improve Hill’s Cup showings when he’ll turn 32 next April? Probably not.
Granted, age is not a guaranteed prohibitive to one’s ability to make it to Cup. SVG and Josh Berry both entered the series as older rookies, and Brenden Queen is going NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series racing in 2026 as a 28-year-old rookie.
Yet in an era where younger drivers such as Connor Zilisch, Corey Heim, and Ty Gibbs are becoming Cup-level talents, would RCR want to buck that trend?
Obviously, if Bennett Transportation agreed to sponsor Hill in Cup, this conversation would be different. Until that happens though, Childress has another in-house driver who may develop soon enough to, in theory, succeed Busch in the No. 8.
Jesse Love, who will turn 21 when the 2026 season begins.
Love won the 2023 ARCA Menards Series title then followed it up with back-to-back Xfinity playoff berths via wins. He is third in points ahead of the upcoming Round of 8 cutoff race. He finished eighth in 2024, and he led more laps last year than this one. He has increased his number of top fives, top 10s and bettered his average finishing spot by one.
To boot, Love has made five Cup starts this year. His average finish is 29.6, nowhere near the front, but only 3.5 spots lower than Hill’s average finish.
A decade difference between the two drivers and Whelen backing Love tip the scales in Love’s favor.
As Love has ascended the ranks, a deeper dive into Hill’s career really makes one question Hill’s viability as a potential Cup regular.
His last Xfinity win at a course other than a drafting-style one came at Martinsville Speedway in the seventh race of this season. Of his 14 wins, only once in his career has he won at two racetracks that do not utilize pack-style racing in the same calendar year, in 2023 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and Pocono Raceway.
RCR has not won there in Cup since Busch joined the organization. Hill would be hard-pressed to nab Cup trophies at those tracks anytime soon if he were elevated.
We’re missing a large elephant in the room, though. Hill won three Xfinity races in the first 11 of this season and could have joined Love in the Round of 8.
Unfortunately, Hill lost his composure at Indianapolis Motor Speedway while racing hard against Aric Almirola when he right-hooked Almirola hard into the wall.
The fallout? A one-race suspension and the loss of all his playoff points.
Hill failed to advance into the Round of 8 by 21 points – the same amount of his lost playoff points. His aggression cost him a chance to compete for the championship as he held the tiebreaker.
The moment at the Brickyard was not Hill’s first time angering others with his driving style. To boot, he promptly came back from his suspension and caused more controversy in his first race back.
So, unless Bennett Transportation wants Hill to move up, don’t pencil him in as a candidate for any available Cup rides in the future.
He will likely remain a fixture of the Xfinity Series, and, lest we forget, that’s a good thing, joining Justin Allgaier as two regulars who will challenge and want to beat those rising through-the-ranks youngsters. Hill will be a top candidate to win the ’26 NXS title, and I suspect he’d rather have that than run in the bottom half of the Cup field regularly. More wins, more successes and more spotlight for his sponsors – that’s something Hill can be proud of.
Mark Kristl joined Frontstretch at the beginning of the 2019 NASCAR season. He is the site's ARCA Menards Series editor. Kristl is also an Eagle Scout and a proud University of Dayton alum.