Brandon Jones shades Austin Hill for speaking up during Darlington drivers meeting: 'Could've done without that'

Austin Hill was among the drivers who spoke at this past Saturday’s Xfinity Series mandatory drivers meeting at Darlington. Brandon Jones could have done without it, he said on “Rubbin is Racing.”

NASCAR scheduled the meeting after the fiasco at Martinsville, in which there were 14 cautions and drivers routinely ran over each other. Reigning Xfinity champion Justin Allgaier also spoke, and that would have been enough for Jones.

“It was good to hear Justin speak up. Justin’s had his fair share but he’s also a champion. I think Justin has learned from a lot of the things he’s done in the past,” Jones said. “I think everyone heard Austin Hill spoke — I could have done without that one. We can just listen to Justin.”

While not to the extent as Allgaier, Hill is a veteran of the series. In theory, it makes sense for him to speak up as he did and offer to mentor the younger drivers. Then again, Hill is known for being perhaps the most aggressive driver in the series. His track record is not great.

Austin Hill takes shots from Brandon Jones, Dale Earnhardt Jr.

When Dale Earnhardt Jr. found out that Hill spoke at the meeting, he was taken aback: “To hear he spoke up in the Xfinity all drivers meeting to suggest he could be one to mentor the kids was the best laugh I had all week.”

Earnhardt followed up with more on the “Dale Jr. Download“: “I heard that Austin Hill had spoken up to offer his time to educate the younger drivers and had a little fun with that on social media. The truth of that is [NASCAR executive] Eric Peterson actually reached out to Austin and asked him to be vocal in the meeting. That’s what Austin shared with me. Interesting choice, Eric. I’m just kidding.

“Austin Hill is one of the most aggressive guys in the series. And he had some moments during that Martinsville race where Sammy [Smith] ended up taking the spotlight from him. I’ve raced against him, and he races hard. Sometimes our cars run into each other and sometimes I blame him.”

Aside from Hill speaking, Jones saw the meeting as effective. NASCAR got its point across that the racing at Martinsville wouldn’t be tolerated moving forward. The racing was far cleaner at Darlington.

“At the end of the day, I think the biggest thing said was if they see that again, there’s gonna be people not coming to Phoenix,” Jones said. “Are they gonna stand by that or not? It’ll be interesting to see but you go to Darlington right after that and it was pretty clean. Nobody really ran over each other. You had Ross [Chastain] be Ross and drive [Christopher] Bell into the wall a little bit, but it still wasn’t quite the craziness you saw at Martinsville. Who knows. Maybe the talk had some effect over people.”