Austin Cindric during NASCAR Cup Series practice Saturday at COTA. (Photo: Sean Folsom | The Podium Finish)
DEL VALLE, Texas — After finishing fourth at Atlanta Motor Speedway, Austin Cindric sat second in points.
Less than a month later, Cindric has dropped to 21st.
After a 29th-place finish at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Cindric crashed just six laps in at Phoenix Raceway, finishing dead last. A week later at Bristol Motor Speedway, amid the chaos of a wild race that included several tire failures, he finished five laps off the pace in 31st.
Safe to say, Cindric is ready to wipe the last three weeks and focus on Circuit of the Americas — a place where he’s had success.
“It’s a great opportunity for us to kind of get back on track and hit the reset button,” Cindric said in a teleconference. “The last couple of weeks have been pretty funky with getting knocked out the first couple of laps at Phoenix and then obviously last week’s craziness and all the tire failures that we experienced, so I’m kind of excited to just get back going and hopefully a lot of green flag running. It’s been a place that we’ve had some good pace.
“The last two weeks have been wildly out of the control of what I feel like our race team is capable of in a few different ways, but as far as COTA stacks up for me, yeah, no matter how you cut it, it’s been a racetrack that I’ve been able to be competitive at and lead laps every time I’ve been there in a Cup car. Personally, it’s not necessarily my favorite racetrack, to be honest, but it’s somewhere that we’ve performed well.”
Cindric has two top 10s in three Cup starts at COTA, as well as a fifth-place finish in the Xfinity Series. But Cindric will have to adapt to the new package, which will be used for the first time at a road course.
Before the season, NASCAR introduced a new package for short tracks and road courses, which includes a 3-inch spoiler, a simplified diffuser and simplified diffuser strakes. The package debuted in competition two weeks ago at Phoenix Raceway after a successful off-season test in the desert.
NASCAR had an extended practice session on Saturday to tweak setups before qualifying.
Austin Cindric walks out during driver introductions before the March 17 NASCAR Cup Series race at Bristol Motor Speedway. (Photo: Josh James | The Podium Finish)
“The similarities are just what our information tells us as far as from aerodynamically how is it different,” Cindric said when asked about the differences of the car at short tracks versus road courses. “I think you’re kind of splitting hairs to really feel like the aero package is going to be a ton different. I look at it more as a simplification to have a similar product from a car pieces and parts standpoint versus how the car actually drives.
“I know everyone’s hoped to have closer racing and greater fall off and sliding cars more and all that. I don’t think this change was big enough to really make me believe that any of that was going to be a whole lot different than what we had last year from my expectations, and as far as how that relates to COTA, I think a lot of the same. I’m not expecting a massive shift from last year to this year.”
Cindric, who grew up racing sports cars, has extra emphasis on road courses. The 25-year-old from Mooresville, North Carolina, owns five Xfinity road course victories and seven Cup top 10s. Outside of his Daytona 500 win, Cindric’s best finish in Cup came in 2022 at the now-defunct Indianapolis Grand Prix.
The Team Penske driver finished sixth at COTA last year.
“[COTA] has everything — every type of corner imaginable,” Cindric said. “High speed, low speed, lefts and rights, braking zones, medium speed corners. You go through the whole gearbox. There is some tire wear. We’ve got some patches in some places, but if anything that will make the tire wear maybe a little bit less, I also don’t’ feel like this tire necessarily wears anymore than any of the rest, but it’s somewhat of an abrasive racetrack, so past that it’s just got everything in it and you just have to have the complete picture to be competitive there.”
Cindrice paced Ford in Saturday’s qualifying session and will start 11th. The race is set for 3:30 p.m. ET on FOX, PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
