Austin Hill did not wait for a reporter to ask him what happened at Chicagoland. He offered the answer before the question landed. “I’m sure y’all have seen the replay,” he said, standing outside his wrecked No. 33 Chevrolet. “So if I have to explain it, people probably need to get glasses.” Forty-eight laps into the Grant Park 220, Shane van Gisbergen’s Trackhouse Chevrolet had clipped Hill’s rear bumper through Turns 3 and 4, sent him into the outside wall, and reopened a rivalry that neither driver has managed to close in three seasons of trying.
What happened next told the real story. Before his car reached the garage, Hill steered across the track and sideswiped van Gisbergen under caution, a parting shot delivered in full view of a national television audience. Van Gisbergen finished the race in 25th and denied any intent behind the contact that started it, saying he was tight in traffic and trying to find clean air when Hill “chopped” his nose entering the corner. NASCAR reviewed the data, the radio traffic, and the camera angles from every lap the two drivers ran near each other, and on Tuesday it issued no penalties to either man. The sanctioning body was careful with its language. Officials did not say nothing happened. They said they could not remove reasonable doubt about intent, which is a different thing entirely, and it is the reason NASCAR still scheduled a sit down with both drivers at EchoPark Speedway this weekend to keep the situation from boiling over into something the penalty box cannot fix.
A Rivalry Three Seasons in the Making
Hill and van Gisbergen did not start as Cup Series rivals. They started as two aggressive road course racers clawing for wins in the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series, and the friction traces back to Circuit of the Americas in March 2024. Van Gisbergen held the lead on an overtime restart when Hill stayed glued to his bumper through Turn 1, forcing SVG wide as Hill’s teammate moved into first. Van Gisbergen answered on the final lap, using his front bumper to push both cars off line entering Turn 15. Kyle Larson slipped through the middle and won the race outright. Hill finished second. Van Gisbergen crossed the line second too, then lost it to a penalty for cutting the course, dropping him to 27th. Neither man left Austin satisfied, and both left with a clear memory of who did what to whom.
Two months later at Sonoma, the ember caught fire. Hill led a restart with 11 laps remaining and chose the preferred lane, only for van Gisbergen to out brake him into Turn 2 and force him wide, taking the win for himself. Hill kept his public comments clipped. “I plead the fifth,” he said. The real message came on the cool down lap, when van Gisbergen’s celebratory burnout was interrupted by Hill driving past with a one finger salute. Van Gisbergen later told podcast host Corey LaJoie that the gesture changed his intentions entirely. “This is for him now, not the fans,” he said, before chasing Hill down and passing him a second time, waving as he went. Asked whether that response was fair given Austin, van Gisbergen did not hesitate. “One hundred percent,” he said. “I hate racing and thinking like that, but to me, we’ve both taken a race win off each other now.”
The Feud Follows Them to the Cup Series
The tension cooled for a stretch, then resurfaced this year once both drivers’ paths crossed regularly in the Cup Series. Hill inherited his current ride under circumstances no one wanted. He was already filling in for Kyle Busch amid Busch’s hospitalization when Busch died on May 21 at age 41 from a case of bacterial pneumonia that progressed into sepsis. Richard Childress retired the No. 8 out of respect, reserving the number for Busch’s son Brexton should he reach the Cup Series one day, and moved Hill into a renumbered No. 33 for the balance of the season. Hill has raced that car with the posture of someone who knows the seat came from tragedy and intends to make something of it anyway.
Pocono added a strange middle chapter. In Stage 2, van Gisbergen made contact with Josh Berry before Hill went three wide on the bottom, triggering a chain reaction that collected several playoff hopefuls including van Gisbergen, who finished 31st. A week later at Naval Base Coronado, the pattern repeated with less ambiguity. On a Lap 32 restart, Hill slid into Connor Zilisch entering the fast Turn 1, sending both cars into the fence and collecting van Gisbergen, who had nowhere to go. All three drivers finished 36th through 38th. For van Gisbergen, San Diego had carried real consequences for his playoff push, and he left with a single point and a clear idea of who to blame, telling reporters he had been wrecked by the same driver two weeks running. He needed until the following Sonoma weekend just to cool off, admitting he was “pretty pissed” about a chance gone, then arrived at the track with enough anger to dominate the field and win.
Chicagoland Reopens Every Old Wound
By the time Chicagoland arrived, both garages were ready for a confrontation. From inside the No. 33 camp, team owner Richard Childress called the contact “payback for California” over the radio, and spotter Derek Kneeland referred to van Gisbergen by a mangled version of his name that made clear exactly how welcome he was in that conversation. Van Gisbergen, for his part, offered a short answer when asked whether he planned to speak with Hill directly. “I’ll talk to him,” he said, “but he just grunts.”
NASCAR vice president of racing communications Mike Forde explained the no penalty decision on the “Hauler Talk” podcast, saying officials looked at everything available and could not conclude the contact was “100 percent intentional and penalty worthy.” He also confirmed the meeting planned for this weekend at EchoPark, a rare step for an incident the sanctioning body had already closed on paper. The penalty report stayed blank, but the message was clear: NASCAR believes this rivalry has grown large enough that it needs direct intervention before the next restart turns into the next wreck.
What Comes Next for Two Drivers Who Cannot Let Go
Both men insist they are simply racing hard, and there is truth in that. Road course specialists fight for the same real estate on every restart, and contact between aggressive drivers racing for position happens without malice more often than fans want to believe. But the accumulated history between Hill and van Gisbergen has outgrown that explanation. COTA created the first grievance. Sonoma cashed it. Pocono and San Diego added compounding interest. Chicagoland proved neither driver has any intention of backing down, regardless of what the penalty report says.
EchoPark now carries stakes beyond the race itself. NASCAR wants assurance that the meeting will settle something. Hill wants respect for a seat he never expected to inherit under these circumstances. Van Gisbergen wants an opponent who will race him straight instead of settling scores lap by lap. None of that resolves cleanly in a conference room, and the two drivers know it. The next time their cars run side by side, the receipts will still be there, and so will the willingness to add to them.
There is also a wider audience watching how this plays out. Both drivers arrived in the Cup Series from backgrounds built on late model and road racing pedigree rather than the traditional oval apprenticeship, and both have fan bases that have grown loyal to the personality each man brings to a broadcast. Van Gisbergen’s rise from Supercars champion in Australia and New Zealand to a Cup regular has made him one of the most closely followed newcomers in the garage, and every clash with Hill gets replayed across two continents within hours. Hill, for his part, has spent the season proving he belongs in a full time Cup ride rather than the Xfinity seat that made his name, and a public feud with one of the field’s most talked about drivers has only sharpened the spotlight on him.
Richard Childress has been careful in public to avoid escalating things beyond the radio chatter that already leaked out, but those close to the team say the frustration inside the shop runs deeper than one incident. Hill has wrecked out of quality finishes twice this season in incidents connected to van Gisbergen, and a team fighting for a playoff spot with a car that inherited its number under tragic circumstances has little patience left for what it views as repeat offenses. Van Gisbergen’s camp, in turn, insists the RCR driver has been just as willing to throw the first punch, pointing to the Chicagoland sideswipe as proof that Hill is not the aggrieved party he sometimes plays in interviews.
Whatever NASCAR officials say when the meeting wraps up, neither driver has shown any inclination to back down publicly. That, more than any single incident, is what makes this rivalry different from the dozens of other on track squabbles that flare up and fade within a week. Hill and van Gisbergen keep choosing to remember.
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