If you have to sit out the playoff bubble, you’ll likely want to use something – anything – for leverage.
And it looks like Austin Cindric has something important going for him on Sunday: the road course.
Considering all the hours and laps he spent in that area during his formative years, and considering how well he performed there during his young NASCAR career, Sunday’s race at Roval in Charlotte I have a feeling Brier Rabbit and rosehip for the 24-year-old rider.
He will take any advantage he can get because he is connected eighth in the playoff standings with Chase Briscoe — only eight drivers advance from the Round of 16 to the next set of playoff races starting next week.
“It’s a great opportunity,” he said in a phone interview Friday, “but it’s not going to be easy.”
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Some NASCAR hot rodders never master road racing. Others either find a way to coexist with him, fall completely in love with him, or, in Cindric’s case, have already dug into their racing bones.
Sounds great for him, right? good. . . His knowledge and penchant for road courses brings some baggage. He knows how fast and how bad things can get away from you on this 2.32 mile circuit with 17 turns.
There are nuances to oval track racing that make it so much more than “hit the gas and keep turning left.” But road racing? Let Cindrik teach us a little.
“My entry into turn 5 affects my exit from turn 8,” he says. “That’s the point. One decision affects another and it just snowballs. I feel like you always have to look two turns ahead. I feel you are more concerned about race track landmarks. This is a more dynamic circle.
“You have to string more corners together and there are more opportunities to mess up – upshifts and downshifts, braking points, apexes, different types of camber in corners where you always mess up the set-up of race cars.”
Once he’s gone, he’s gone
One subtlety to pay attention to in a road race: When you hear Junior Earnhardt or someone else in the TV booth talking about someone who messed up the braking zone or a corner, watch that car either pick up or start losing ground dramatically . Sometimes it’s an obvious boo-boo, but often it’s not.
And the biggest immediate problem?
“Once you lose it, you’ll never get it back,” says Cindrik. “If I go through Turn 5 and don’t get to the top of 6, I’m going to have a really tough time on that stretch of the racetrack through 7, 8 and 9.
“I already missed it, I already had to reset, slow the car too much. I think it’s about risk management in that sense. You have to wait immediately to get the reset. And the thing about Roval is that there aren’t that many at once.”
Whatever happens on Sunday, Cindric will have a good rookie season in the books. That was accomplished back in February when he won the Daytona 500. Speaking of mixed-race ability, the former racer quickly learned “slab racing” at Daytona and Talladega.
Escape from Talladega from the top 10
Speaking of superspeedways, he learned last week at Talladega that sometimes the winning thing is to lay it down and run away with a ninth-place finish.
“It was a sigh of relief because we had damage to the nose from the first crash and our car was very slow after that,” he says. “I couldn’t leave the lane, unfortunately, and I had many opportunities to do so at the end of the race. But we were slow enough to lose the draft if we weren’t in the middle of the pack.”
Sometimes it’s the right place/right time. Sometimes there’s an extra bit of luck involved. Through no fault of his own, a driver sitting in the middle of a train of 20 cars can suddenly find himself completely alone and drive back. If his car breaks down, he will sink like a stone. Cindric avoided that fall in the final laps of Talladega.
“That’s exactly what happened in Stage 2 when we lost the draft,” he says. “Suddenly, two leaders leave, then several guys leave behind us, and I’m gone. It happens so fast. As a driver, you just feel handcuffed.
“You have to rely on your competitors, and that’s never going to be a great place because I can guarantee you that none of them have my best interests at heart.”
Cindric has finished eighth or higher in four of the five road races this year. Five of his 13 Xfinity Series wins from 2019-2021 have come on road courses.
Despite that and until further notice, he will be best known for winning the biggest oval in stock car racing, the 2022 Daytona 500. He figures it will be a great parting gift for the season, regardless of how long his playoff run is after Sunday.
“Without a doubt, the Daytona 500 is the gift that keeps on giving,” he says. “The sports world — not just the racing world — has a lot of respect and recognition for the Daytona 500. I’ve definitely benefited from that, and I’ve really enjoyed accepting that title.”
— Contact Ken Willis at ken.willis@news-jrnl.com