CAN ALMIROLA BOUNCE BACK?
Aric Almirola pulled no punches Tuesday when asked to evaluate the season so far for his No. 10 Ford team.
“Obviously, we got off to a horrendous start,” Almirola said. “Not getting the points and bad finishes. The best thing that’s happened to us all year is we won the Duel and got 10 points.”
Since winning the first Duel at Daytona, Almirola has finished in the bottom third in three of the five races completed this season. Before Phoenix last weekend, where Almirola finished 11th, his best finish this year was 17th at Homestead.
It’s been his longest streak of finishes outside of the top 10 since 2019. He’s ranked 26th in points and acknowledged that it’ll be tough to make playoffs without a win this year, but he said that doesn’t change his team’s strategy.
The aim for Almirola and his Stewart-Haas Racing team, he said, is to steadily reverse course with consistent runs in each stage, then to earn top-10 and top-five finishes, building off a “solid” run at Phoenix.
“Every once in a while you can squeak something crazy out on strategy, but for the most part, you don’t really win races on wild strategy anymore unless you have a fast race car,” Almirola said.
He explained that the forces working against better results this year have been a combination of bad luck, driver errors and slow equipment. He made an early exit from the Daytona 500 after he was spun out by Christopher Bell to bring out the first caution of the race. At the Daytona road course, Almirola also went for an early spin running in the top 10 to lose track position before clawing his way back to a top-20 finish. Another mistake at Homestead the following week, when Almirola made contact with Ryan Blaney, sent him to a bottom half finish. At Las Vegas, an “off ” car combined with debris in the left front tire that eventually went flat put him in last place.
“I think a lot of it has been bad luck and circumstances, but there have also been mistakes on my part as well,” Almirola said. “We’ve just gotta clean everything up.”
He said that the mix of different winners to start the season isn’t necessarily adding pressure to perform and that the pressure comes from knowing his SHR team is capable of doing better. Last season, Almirola and crew chief Mike Bugarewicz notched nine straight top-10 finishes, earning the No. 10 a spot in the playoffs on points. Almirola said Phoenix last weekend could be the turning point as the team searches for consistency with higher finishes.
“Never have I been in a situation like we are in now to where you’re way on the outside trying to claw your way back into contention,” Almirola said. “The old saying holds true though. The only way to eat an
elephant is one bite at a time.”
“We’ve gotta focus on just trying to score as many stage points as we can and trying to get the best finish we can,” Almirola continued. “And if that means running fifth with a fifth-place car, then we do that. And if we have a car capable of winning, then we need to do everything in our power to try and get the W.”