Childress: Austin Hill to Remain in No. 33 NASCAR Cup Car 'As Far As I'm Concerned'

BROOKLYN, Mich. -- Richard Childress confirmed Austin Hill is set to remain in the No. 33 NASCAR Cup Series car his team renumbered after the death of Kyle Busch.

Hill will run the No. 33 Chevrolet full-time in the NASCAR Cup Series for Richard Childress Racing while also running RCR's No. 21 Chevrolet full-time in the NASCAR O'Reilly Auto Parts Series. 

Hill took up the job of driving the No. 33 with limited experience racing a Cup car. Although he has a pair of 27th-place finishes in his two starts with the renumbered team, a hub issue at Charlotte Motor Speedway and various mechanical issues at Nashville Superspeedway pushed him back to those poor finishes.

Despite Hill's struggles, Childress said Saturday his driver is keeping the sponsors happy.

“Our sponsors have been great to work with through this. Just like we had with Dale (Earnhardt Sr.), the sponsors worked really well with us with that loss. Putting Austin Hill in it was a choice that we made for right now," Childress said. 

Childress explained Hill isn't driving the No. 8 for a special reason.

“Mike Verlander, our President, and I were talking about it. We made the decision to not run the 8 car. Kyle helped us design it. We told him we had the 8 number," Childress said. "He said, ‘let's design it differently’, so this was Kyle's design. We showed him a lot of stuff and at the end of the day, this was his design, so we decided to take it off."

Having run the 33 before, including with Hill in two Cup races just this year, it was easy for RCR to choose that number.

"In 2001, we didn't have a number. We had the 33 already, so we just figured we'd put it on it. Back then, I just told Bobby Hutchens, ‘call NASCAR and get the lowest number available’, and it happened to be No. 29 when we put (Kevin) Harvick in it," Childress said. "We talked about it and we decided that Austin Hill was who we needed to put in it at this time.”

Hill's strong suit in NOAPS competition is drafting tracks with 11 of his 15 career wins coming at Daytona International Speedway, Talladega Superspeedway and EchoPark Speedway Atlanta. However, road courses have been also been strong for Hill, who scored a top-10 finish in last year's Cup race at the Chicago Street Course.

Hill and the rest of the Cup field head to a similar course, Naval Base Coronado in San Diego, in two weeks for the June 21 Anduril 250 Race for the Base.