Austin Hill reveals phone call to NASCAR legend before replacing Kyle Busch at RCR

NASCAR star Austin Hill has revealed a key phone call he made after being asked by Richard Childress Racing to replace Kyle Busch at the Coca-Cola 600 after his sudden passing.

The consistent O'Reilly Series challenger has driven for RCR in that series since 2022, and his experience and standing within the team made him the logical choice to step up at a team in turmoil after Busch's death.

Speaking to Jeff Gluck for an excellent 12 Questions column for The Athletic, Hill revealed that one of his first calls was to Kevin Harvick, looking to get his perspective as the man who replaced Dale Earnhardt at the same team after his death at Daytona in 2001.

Busch's old car now runs with the No. 33 for Hill, with the No. 8 being held in reserve for Busch's son Brexton at some point in the future.

Hill was keen to stress that he still considers it Busch's race team, even revealing that he pushed to keep his name off the car for the rest of the season – suggesting that the team run it blank if they weren't going to keep Busch's name on it.

Hill: I didn't want this to be about me

On his initial reaction and decision-making process, he said: "For starters, I called Kevin Harvick. We had a very good conversation. I figured he’s one of the only people in our sport who’s gone through something similar, so I wanted his input and wanted to hear how he approached it.

"I also leaned on everybody at RCR. I talked with Richard. I was just trying to figure out the best way to go about everything.

"The No. 1 thing that I kept going back to was that I didn’t want it to be about me at all. I didn’t want anyone to even know I was driving the race car. When the decision was made to take the No. 8 off and put the 33 on it, I was all for it. I said, 'Look, I don’t want anything that’s going to potentially make it look bad for Kyle or his family'.

"Then they brought up putting my name on the car. I said, 'I don’t think we should put my name on the car'. I said if you don’t want Kyle’s name on it, we should do it blank. I even kind of pushed for not having my name on it for the rest of the season.

"At the end of the day, we’re several weeks out, but this is still Kyle’s race team. This is still his race car that he should be racing this weekend, next weekend and the weekend after that. I never wanted it to be about me."