Kyle Petty calls Austin Hill 'a little bit of a punk' after dust-up with SVG at Sonoma

Kyle Petty went after Austin Hill for his actions against Shane van Gisbergen (SVG) at the NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Sonoma. The former NASCAR star recapped the race and talked about how SVG did a burnout by Hill after winning the race. This led to Hill giving him the middle finger as SVG drove away.

“Flip the bird all you want to Austin Hill, you lost the race,” Petty said. “You opened up the door, you had control of the race when you took the green flag. You gave that little bit of extra room, and let me you something, SVG’s got a little bit of redneck in him. He took that opening, he door slammed him, sent him out of the way and went on to victory. That’s not SVG’s fault.”

Petty continued: “What we have here in Austin Hill I think is a little bit of a punk and a little bit of a guy with an attitude and a little bit of a bully.” Petty then took a look at Hill’s run-in with Cole Custer at Charlotte and what happened on Saturday with SVG.

“Here’s a guy who seems to be the common denominator,” Petty said. “It’s always him getting into it with someone else.”

What happened with Austin Hill and SVG?

Hill was leading the race with 11 laps to go. He was battling with SVG, but Hill lost the lead when he collided with SVG and slid into the grass, Hill earned a P5 finish and is second in the Xfinity Series standings.

“I plead the fifth. I’m not gonna say anything about it,” Hill said after the race, per NASCAR.com. “We’ll just go onto the next one. Good, hard racing. Bennett Chevrolet was fast as Xfinity internet. We were holding off SVG there for a while, had that caution and I knew it was gonna be tough on the restart. Then, it didn’t work out, but we had a good points day, finished in the top five. Can’t ask for more than that.”

SVG shared his side of the story after the race.  “I don’t know. I didn’t go into the corner planning to take him out,” he said. “Like, I wasn’t going to hit him off the track, but I was gonna try to pass him and I did everything I could. And when he kept choosing left on restarts, I was like ‘oh, that’s surprising,’ because I chose the left on the first restart and it was a mistake. And if I had the opportunity again I would have chosen the right every time.”