Michael McDowell Does Not Want NASCAR to Penalize Austin Hill After Watkins Glen Incident

It’s not very often that a rival stands up in support of another driver who wrecked him. But that’s exactly what happened in Saturday’s Xfinity Series race at Watkins Glen International.

Cup Series regular Michael McDowell was filling in for Josh Williams, who was fired by Kaulig Racing two weeks ago, in a one-off start and McDowell’s first Xfinity Series start since 2016, when he won at Road America.

On Saturday, McDowell and Austin Hill were involved in a collision that spawned a multi-car pileup. Here’s a replay of the incident. Now, Hill was already in trouble with NASCAR, having been placed on a one-race suspension last week for his tangle with Aric Almirola at Indianapolis.

You would think Hill would have learned his lesson, but he vowed to reporters that he would not change his aggressive style, and Saturday proved that. The question now is whether he’ll receive another suspension, although McDowell came to Hill’s defense and encouraged NASCAR not to bring down its wrath upon Hill again. Part of the reason for McDowell essentially turning the other cheek could have been his deeply religious background.

Hill is behind McDowell, who was in second place at the time, and it appears Hill bobbled and inadvertently made contact with the rear of McDowell’s car, essentially like a pit maneuver that police cars make when they’re trying to stop a felon’s car, sending McDowell’s car head-on into the outside guardrail, triggering a major wreck that collected over a dozen cars.

“Mainly, I would get to people’s right sides, and that time, I ended up getting to his left side,” Hill said of McDowell in an interview with The CW after he was cleared from the track medical center. “I thought that it could work. We obviously don’t have a ton of spotters around here. I don’t know if he has a spotter off of that carousel corner. He might not.

“But as soon as I saw he was staying tight to the grass, I probably should have lifted. That was definitely just on me. Just driver error. I’m going for it here. The #88 is driving away from us and I felt like I needed to make a move as fast as possible on the #11. Destroyed a lot of race cars, so it’s just really unfortunate.”

McDowell: It was just a racing incident

McDowell essentially took a no-harm, no-foul stance of the incident, agreeing with Hill that it was driver error and just a racing incident.

“He turned me for sure,” McDowell said of Hill. “There was no way he was going to get alongside me. There was no room there… To me, he wasn’t alongside me. Just got to my rear bumper and turned me sideways.

“I’m not talking like he intentionally hooked me. He doesn’t need a penalty for that. There was no way he was going to finish the pass there and just made a decision not to lift and turned me. But that’s not the same as a right rear hook at an oval. I don’t want that to be the headline. Unfortunately, we had a fun race that was going good until it wasn’t.”

McDowell tried to inject some levity into the situation, even though it cost him a chance at a win. “It was a fun hit,” McDowell said. “It was a good one. If you’re going to do it, do it big.”