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Hill Looks to Rekindle Kansas Success in NXS

Rekindle Kansas Success … Austin Hill looks to rekindle his past success at Kansas Speedway in the NASCAR Xfinity Series (NXS) on Saturday evening. The Kansas Lottery 300 will be the first NXS start at Kansas for the driver of the No. 61 Toyota Tsusho Toyota Supra and his fourth-consecutive appearance on the tour. Hill scored his first NASCAR Gander RV & Outdoors Truck Series victory of the season at Kansas on July 24th and has finished sixth or better in his three Kansas starts with HRE. He and crew chief Scott Zipadelli will look to translate their Gander Trucks performances over to the No. 61 Supra in the second act of Saturday’s doubleheader.

Double Duty Diet … Hill has had a steady diet of double duty weekends as of late. His NXS Kansas debut this weekend will come immediately on the heels of the first Gander Trucks race in Round 2 of the playoffs and will mark his third double-duty weekend in the last four weeks. This weekend marks Hill’s eighth NXS start of the season and looks to pad his stat line at Kansas, which includes one win, two top five’s, six top-10’s and finishes of 12th or better in all four of his Gander Trucks appearances.

Season to Date … In seven NXS starts this season, the Winston, Ga. product tied his career-best finish with a ninth-place result at Darlington Raceway in September. He enters Kansas tied atop the Gander Trucks playoff standings and has captured two victories, nine top-five, and 15 top-10 finishes in 19 races in his Toyota Tundra. Hill and the HRE team are looking to automatically punch their way to the Gander Trucks championship finale at Phoenix Raceway win on Saturday afternoon and parlay that into a career outing in the 300-mile NXS event.

Chassis Selection … Zipadelli and the Toyota Tsusho team prepared chassis No. 004 for Hill’s NXS debut in Kansas. This Toyota Supra was most recently raced at Las Vegas Motor Speedway last month when Hill recovered from an early race spin to finish 17th. Kansas marks this Toyota Supra's second appearance of the season.

Tune In … Coverage from Kansas Speedway will kick off at 6:30 p.m. ET with Countdown to Green on NBC Sports Network (NBCSN) followed by the green flag at 7:00 p.m. ET on NBCSN. Stay updated with Hill and the No. 61 Toyota Tsusho team by following @Hattori_Racing on Twitter, Hattori Racing Enterprises on Facebook, and @hattoriracing on Instagram.

Austin Hill Quote:

On pulling double duty at Kansas:

“We have plenty of work ahead of us on Saturday with running 500 miles between both races, but we have two great opportunities to run well with our Toyota Tsusho Toyotas. Kansas has been a place that we’ve always run well in the truck and hopefully we can carry that over to our Toyota Supra Saturday night. We ran this car at Las Vegas a few weeks ago and definitely learned quite a bit on what we can improve on going into Kansas. We had a good top-10 run at Darlington a while back so hopefully we can get back to that, execute all day, and get a good finish for all the guys at HRE and everyone at Toyota Tsusho.”