Dale Earnhardt Jr. questions Austin Hill offering to mentor drivers after Martinsville chaos

Ahead of Saturday’s Xfinity Series race at Darlington, NASCAR held a mandatory drivers meeting to emphasize that the racing which took place the prior weekend at Martinsville would not be tolerated moving forward. Among those who spoke was Austin Hill, winner of last Saturday’s race at Martinsville.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. isn’t sure why he did. The JR Motorsports co-owner said he was taken aback by Hill offering to be a mentor for the younger drivers in the series.

“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 tweeted Sunday.

Hill took advantage of Sammy Smith‘s aggressive move on the last lap to take the checkered flag. But well before then, Hill was one of the drivers involved in the chaos of the caution filled race. Hill has been called out by his competitors for reckless driving multiple times in the past. Earnhardt joined in on this week’s “Dale Jr. Download.”

“Austin Hill gets out of that car, and he’s like, ‘I damn won. What the hell did I do wrong? Here I am at Victory Lane. I must have done it right,’” Earnhardt said.

Austin Hill: NASCAR ‘got their point across’ in Darlington drivers meeting after Martinsville fiasco

As for the meeting, Hill spoke in length about it with reporters. Hill said that NASCAR got its message across.

“I would say the tone of the meeting was firm, but they got their point across, and they did it in a really good way,” Hill said. “So, I think that was good for everyone in the series to hear, you know, the different sides of it with all three that were in there. A lot of great things were said about what we could do better going forward. I stand strongly on the side of, for whatever reason, when the Xfinity Series goes to Martinsville, we just lose our minds.

“But everyone else, we are the best racing in NASCAR, and I strongly stand behind that. That we are the best series in NASCAR. Just when you go to Martinsville, we look like we don’t know what we’re doing. So, we’re going to get through it. We have whatever it is, seven, eight months before we go back to Martinsville. I’m hoping a lot of things change between now and then. I don’t think that just one meeting is going to change the outcome of the playoff race in Martinsville.

“So, it might be one of those cases where we need to have multiple meetings throughout the year just to reiterate some of the stuff. Even if things aren’t happening on the racetrack. Say we’re all racing clean and we’re all doing the right things. But I think we gotta keep it in everyone’s head, you know, race the way you want to be raced and race with respect. I thought that’s kind of where we ended the conversation today and I thought it was all great.”