A comparison to Dale Earnhardt Sr. is no mean feat. Last weekend, Richard Childress Racing ended up achieving something that it had achieved in the 1990s. The team won its fifth consecutive victory in the Daytona season-opener, tying a mark set by Dale Earnhardt Inc. from 1990-94. And behind this unbeatable streak lies a heartbreaking failure for JR Motorsports.

While Richard Childress and Co. hailed Dale Sr., JRM driver Justin Allgaier referred to Dale Jr. while trying to explain his and his teammates’ failure.

An attempt to scrub off a collective stain

“Look, Dale Earnhardt Jr. was a fantastic plate racer, but he also had a lot of friends, right? And while, you know, a lot of us would like to say, hey, we would do whatever it’s going to take to go past the 21, there’s still a lot of folks that know if they follow the 21, they’re probably going to have a solid day, and they’re going to finish in the top five,” Justin Allgaier said in a media availability on Friday.

Austin Hill, driver of the No. 21 RCR Chevrolet, led a race-high 78 of the 120 laps in the NASCAR OAPS Daytona race. But he was tested all night, facing determined charges from three JR Motorsports drivers. Hill ultimately had to tough it out on three restarts in the final 12 laps. And he succeeded – beating Allgaier in another Chevrolet to the finish line by a slight .081-seconds.

News served to you like never before!

Prefer us on Google, To get latest news on feed

Prefer Us on Google

The inability on the part of the JRM drivers to overtake him surprised Austin Hill himself. He called it a ‘weird dynamic’ that continues to happen. Hill believed there were cars capable of beating him, but they did not execute. After leading for most of the race, Hill even had qualms of wrecking due to the tight draft and aggressive pushes. However, his new tires and solid drive pushed back Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s drivers.

“I think it’s circumstantial,” Justin Allgaier continued. He compared the speeds of his team and those of RCR’s drivers. “Like, just the four of us together are very rarely in a position to be able to line up and just push past, right? I think that, you know, especially when the two and the 21 were on each other, they were able to make some really good speed.”

For most of the media session, Justin Allgaier’s teammates – Rajah Caruth, Carson Kvapil, and Sammy Smith – also explained why they could not beat Austin Hill. Eventually, however, all seemed to scratch their heads in confusion.

Even their team owner, Dale Earnhardt Jr., was starry-eyed about Hill’s success.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. is admiring and lamenting

Austin Hill has emerged as one of the finest superspeedway racers around. Among his 15 NASCAR OAPS wins, the RCR driver has fetched 11 trophies at the drafting tracks of Daytona International Speedway, EchoPark Speedway, and Talladega Superspeedway. And in his most recent win, Hill again demonstrated his masterful blocking to get to Victory Lane. Although he bested all four JR Motorsports drivers, the latter team’s owner could not help but admire him.

“Austin Hill, man. Dude is hard to beat,” Dale Earnhardt Jr. said Tuesday on the Dale Jr. Download. “I get so frustrated — Austin Hill’s gotta love this, too — he loves kicking our ass at that racetrack and Atlanta and Talladega. He’s good at it, and he knows he’s good at it. We try to scheme about how we’re gonna try to beat him, and we just can’t figure it out.”

“Fans go on the internet, and they’re like, ‘Dude, you got four cars and it’s one guy. Four cars, how?’ But y’all just don’t know, man. I mean, that damn car is fast. When we try to get around him or go by him, he’s fast and the car’s ridiculous, and he actually is by far the best one at it.”

Clearly, Austin Hill’s talents have left the JRM fold dumbfounded. Let’s see what strategy they pull out to defeat the RCR driver soon.