(Photo: Teresa Bennink | The Podium Finish)
LINCOLN, Ala. — When it comes to racing, Austin Cindric will drive anything. With an early background primarily in road racing, it might not have been expected that some of his best finishes would have come at drafting tracks, but the trend continued Sunday when Cindric earned a fifth-place finish in the YellaWood 500 at Talladega Superspeedway.
In his second season of NASCAR Cup Series racing, Cindric is not a contender in the Playoffs. Cindric and Team Penske have struggled with consistent speed in 2023. Ryan Blaney is the only Penske driver to have advanced out of the first round, leaving Cindric and 2022 series champion Joey Logano to improve for the 2024 season. Talladega seemed to be the place where Penske would break through its slump with two drivers finishing in the top five.
(Photo: Teresa Bennink | The Podium Finish)
As the Talladega race weekend progressed, Cindric found some of that elusive speed, qualifying in the seventh position Saturday afternoon. Stage 1 was successful for Cindric as he led 10 laps in the opening segment, finishing with a sixth-place spot, one spot higher than where he started.
Stage 2 was not as kind to Cindric and the No. 2 Discount Tire Ford. During a pit stop, Cindric received a penalty for speeding on pit road, resulting in a pass-through. He fell a lap down.
A caution for debris on the backstretch on Lap 172 allowed Cindric to get the free pass and gain his lap back. From that point, Cindric made progress through the field, crossing the finish line in the sixth position.
(Photo: Teresa Bennink | The Podium Finish)
“It’s certainly good to get a top 10 with the Discount Tire Ford,” Cindric said. “Who’d have thought that Talladega would be the first place we would get a finish in a month without any damage or hitting anything? I put us behind with a speeding penalty and was still able to recover at the end. I’m super happy for Ryan and everybody on the 12 team to be able to come out and knock off a win into the next round. It’s very well deserved. We brought some really fast cars at Team Penske, Ford Performance [and] Roush Yates Engines. Everybody did a great job this weekend and it paid off.”
After post-race inspection concluded and Kevin Harvick got disqualified, Cindric was awarded a fifth-place finish. It is Cindric’s highest finish of the year with sixth-place finishes recorded at Las Vegas, Circuit of the Americas and the Chicago Street Race.
