HAMPTON, Ga. — The skies darkened and the rain began to fall at Atlanta Motor Speedway on Saturday afternoon, pelting the several people gathered outside of the NASCAR Cup Series hauler.
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For 17 minutes, they stood outside waiting for Austin Hill and Shane van Gisbergen to emerge from their mandatory meeting with NASCAR. They waited to see if either driver would provide details into a conversation focused on their recent run-ins on the track.
"It went. It was interesting," van Gisbergen said as he quickly left the hauler and headed off through the garage.
Hill exited next, and he spent 1 minute providing scant details about the conversation.
"I mean, NASCAR let us know what we need to do going forward," Hill said. He added that he and van Gisbergen had a conversation and that he hopes the situation between them is settled.
"We're gonna go race, and yeah, I'm looking forward to it," the Richard Childress Racing driver added before walking away.
Austin Hill's brief comments after the meeting with Shane van Gisbergen and NASCAR.
He doesn't know why they keep having run-ins. He didn't say much about the actual message delivered to him and SVG. pic.twitter.com/WvwxWggH8Q— John Newby (@JohnNewby_) July 11, 2026
Van Gisbergen provided more details about the conversation later in the day as part of a bullpen session in the media center. He called the dynamic of the meeting, his first in the hauler, "weird" and said that he just left more confused.
The situation didn't fully feel resolved, and he said that only he showed remorse during the meeting.
"I feel like everyone here, I've been able to race with respect, and when I have a problem with someone, whether it's a crash or I've made a mistake and got into them, I feel like everyone's receptive, and I can move on quick," van Gisbergen said.
"It's pretty cool here. You can just chat to people, and it moves on. And I never feel like I've been able to talk to Austin like that. And yeah, so I don't know. And then he just backs up and resorts to threatening violence. It's a weird, weird thing."
The two drivers have butted heads multiple times since van Gisbergen moved to NASCAR full-time in 2024, starting with an overtime finish at Circuit of the Americas that season. They aggressively moved each other, damaging both their cars and opening the door for Kyle Larson to win the race.
They then slammed doors during a late restart at Sonoma Raceway that season, which knocked Hill off into the dirt. Van Gisbergen won and then performed a burnout around the road course next to Hill.
"I plead the fifth. I'm not gonna say anything about it," Hill said in part after the Sonoma race. "We'll just go onto the next one. Good, hard racing."
#NASCAR Shane Van Gisbergen WINS Sonoma and does a EPIC Burnout/Drift & Big Kuntry 😂 Austin Hill tries to cut him off. pic.twitter.com/aV5Yxqbt1K
— WB Network (@WBNetwork72) June 9, 2024
The rivalry simmered a bit once van Gisbergen moved to the Cup Series on a full-time basis. They didn't race around each other on a regular basis.
But the run-ins began anew when Hill had to take over the second Richard Childress Racing entry after Kyle Busch's sudden death.
Van Gisbergen wrecked at Pocono earlier this season as part of a three-wide incident with Hill and Josh Berry. He finished 31st.
A multi-car crash then took place in San Diego after Hill's car went straight into Turn 1. It collected the cars of Connor Zilisch and van Gisbergen, knocking them all out of the race.
The boiling point that led to meeting with NASCAR occurred at Chicagoland Speedway. Contact from van Gisbergen sent Hill spinning into the outside wall and effectively ended his day. Although Hill first drove back onto the track under caution and door-slammed van Gisbergen.
"I definitely didn't want to wreck a race car, and you know, I definitely didn't want to escalate," van Gisbergen said about the Chicagoland run-ins.
"I don't really know if it's a rivalry, but whatever it's been between us the last three years, we never seem to race well together. So obviously, I don't want to escalate it. I'm the one with a lot to lose."
These two have history. pic.twitter.com/v67sRrJRxy
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) July 5, 2026
Richard Childress Racing called this move intentional; van Gisbergen called it an accident. Though he said Hill "just grunts" when asked if they would have a conversation, showing that he and Hill just don't get along.
NASCAR chose not to penalize either driver for these incidents at Chicagoland; instead, officials set a meeting to ensure that this conflict would not escalate further.
But while these two drivers are "back at zero" after the sitdown, it still does not appear that they will become buddies in the immediate future.
Why do Hill and van Gisbergen keep running into each other on the track? Neither truly knows the full answer to that question.
Part of the conflict could be attributed to their close proximity on the track on a regular basis. But they race around 30-plus other drivers each week without friction. They just have issues with each other.
"I guess we're very similar in some ways," van Gisbergen said. "You know, I'm probably a bit more reserved than him, but I'm aggressive on track, I guess.
"And you're gonna always clash with people like that. And I don't know. I'm not gonna back down or be threatened by someone, but I don't want to fight anyone either."
These two drivers will remain in the spotlight moving forward. Will they wreck each other, or will they show that this meeting calmed down the conflict?
Hill and van Gisbergen both indicated that they just want to move forward after their run-ins and the meeting in the NASCAR hauler. Whether this happens remains to be seen, but van Gisbergen does not have much optimism.
We're obviously at zero, right? So I have to race with respect and try and start building it up," he said. "Try and cut him breaks, but if it doesn't come my way...I don't know how to fix him, but I'm gonna just try to carry on and race clean.
"But obviously there's a risk these next seven races. I've got to get in the top 16, right, and he's probably gonna try to threaten that. That kind of sucks, but is what it is."
