NASCAR penalty knocks driver out of playoffs at Charlotte Roval

Talk about NASCAR playoff agony, Austin Hill may just have rewritten the playbook.

They say that revenge is a dish best served cold, and on Saturday in Charlotte the racing gods feasted a month after their meal had first been cooked.

This sorry tale began back in late July when the 31-year-old star from Winston, Georgia was handed a one-race Xfinity Series ban for intentionally wrecking Aric Almirola at Indianapolis.

As well as the ban, Hill was forced to forfeit all his playoff points earned to that moment (21) and any he would subsequently earn for the remainder of the regular season (6).

Nobody would know the full impact of that penalty until the postseason, and on Saturday it bit him hard on the rear end at the Roval.

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Indy penalty comes back to bite Austin Hill

Hill would eventually finish in 28th position in the Blue Cross NC 250 as engine issues ruined his day after he had been up front early. That result left him - you guessed it - missing out on the Round of 8 by EXACTLY 21 points. What were the odds…

Afterwards Hill spoke about his postseason exit, but was at pains to stress he did not blame it on that Indy penalty.

Asked if the pain hit extra hard, he told media including FOX insider Bob Pockrass: “No, not really. The only reason I say no is because we should never have even been that far back in the first place. Without the issue we would have probably been plus 12 points or something like that. So we were probably going to make it in with the points I would have had.

“But you can’t go back on that, NASCAR already took it from us, so when I came into these playoffs I didn’t view it as ‘hey, we lost 21 bonus points’, I just viewed it as ‘we didn’t win any races or get stage points this year’. And I thought that our team was capable enough of still making it into the next round.

“Just Bristol we didn’t run well, and then this happened tonight. Can’t have two bad races in a race where it’s three and go home.”

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