Richard Childress Racing’s Austin Hill and Jesse Love running one & two at Daytona – Team Chevy Photo
by Nathan Solomon NASCAR.com
Three weeks into the 2026 campaign, the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series has provided no shortage of drama and storylines. From a popular first-time winner to some surprises toward the top of the standings (and maybe some rivalries formed along the way), this season is already as compelling as ever.
See what’s stood out so far in the O’Reilly Series and the storylines that are emerging heading into Saturday’s race at Phoenix Raceway (7:30 p.m. ET, The CW, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
Hot start for RCR … will it stick?
It probably shouldn’t be a surprise that Richard Childress Racing paces the early standings, but here we are again.
Austin Hill has a 28-point lead over teammate Jesse Love, marking the second year in a row the duo is 1-2 after three races, and the fourth consecutive season Hill leads after the third race.
The 31-year-old from Winston, Georgia, won the opener at Daytona for the fourth time in five years, and quietly came home 2nd last weekend at Circuit of The Americas.
Sandwiched in between: a 12th-place finish at EchoPark Speedway. Hill nearly went back-to-back to open 2026 but contact battling for the win on the final lap with Ross Chastain at EchoPark resulted in a long slide through the final set of corners. Had he won at the Atlanta-area drafting track, we could be talking about a 50+ point lead for the series veteran.
For Love, he’s the only driver with top 10s in all three races thus far. He’s earned the fourth-most stage points and owns the second-best average running position (5.3, only to Hill).
But the question is: can this be sustained?
Eleven of Hill’s 15 career victories are at drafting tracks. Two of Love’s three are as well, but the outlier came last fall at Phoenix, the site of his championship triumph. But as the season progresses, even as both drivers have shown sustained consistency in a postseason format where that matters, we’ll see if the duo can bank more wins at traditional tracks to stave off the rest of the field.