Cup Series reality comes knocking for Cindric
Austin Cindric has been knocked back into reality.
Cindric started the NASCAR Cup Series season on the highest of highs by winning the Daytona 500. That was Feb. 20 and in the immediate aftermath, the 23-year-old became a shining star pulled in all directions, thrust through obligation after obligation and oh, lest we forget, still trying to develop a relationship with his race team.
It was anything but a typical start to the season for a rookie. And it’s taken until just recently for things to settle down enough to allow Cindric to begin to feel like a rookie getting his bearings in NASCAR’S top division.
“Honestly, starting last week was the first time I really had a normal week leading up to a race as far as not traveling during the week and a lot of different variables,” Cindric says. “From that standpoint, yeah, it’s been great to get a process down that I probably haven’t had the luxury of the first couple of weeks of the year. The honeymoon phase is certainly over; trying to figure out (being) a rookie in the Cup Series. It certainly isn’t easy.”
While it’s been nonstop for Cindric away from the public eye, on the racetrack, he’s been almost out of sight and out of mind since leaving Daytona Beach, Florida. Results for the No. 2 team have been up and down, although a close look at the loop data (specific performance metrics) suggests Cindric is finishing about where’s he’s running each week.
He failed to finish at Atlanta Motor Speedway – where drivers faced a revamped 1.5-miler that raced like a superspeedway, he was one of 31 drivers involved in incidents.
The eighth-place effort on the COTA road course March 27 was Cindric’s first top-10 finish since the Daytona 500. It was also the first race since Daytona where he’d led laps.
As Cindric and his Jeremy Bullinsled group has started to get into a rhythm, they have found themselves dealing with the same thing the rest of the competition is. The biggest on the agenda is the Next Gen car.
“It’s trying to figure out a new car and new situation and put that on top of new competitors and new team members,” Cindric says. “There’s a lot of newness for me. A lot of that is an opportunity to grow, but in some ways it’s good to have a new environment. But otherwise, just adapt and react and try to make the most of it, and on the bad days, learn, and on the good days, be happy they were good.”
Cindric led the points standings through the first two races but has since fallen to 15th, though he knows he’ll likely be in the postseason as long as there aren’t more than 16 different race winners.
“I think it’s a little early to tell as far as if we’re to overreact to anything. But it’s a really tight-knit group on the 2 car, so I’m just trying to integrate myself into that and get ourselves a process going . ... There’s been some good and some bad, and we’ll learn from it.”