Team Penske driver Austin Cindric rode a mid-season surge to the top of the NASCAR Xfinity Series standings last year before claiming the title with a victory in the Championship 4 event in November at Phoenix Raceway.
In the process, Cindric exploded the myth that he’s a one-trick pony who could win only on road courses. On July 9, Cindric started his championship charge with a victory on Kentucky Speedway’s intermediate oval. A day later, he repeated the feat.
On July 18 at Texas Motor Speedway, Cindric won his third straight oval race, definitively putting to rest the notion that tracks without right turns weren’t his cup of tea. And with his championship win at Phoenix—another oval track—he put to rest the canard that, at 6-foot-4, he was too tall to be a successful race car driver.
“I’ve been told I was too tall by a lot of people, and there’s not been a single race car that I haven’t been able to fit in,” said Cindric, who begins defense of his Xfinity Series championship in Saturday’s Beef. It’s What’s For Dinner. 300 at Daytona International Speedway (5 p.m. ET on FS1, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). “Some haven’t been comfortable, some have hurt, some are fine. NASCAR is definitely the roomier of the race cars I’ve driven, so in more ways than one, this is a great home for me.
“But, yeah, the tall thing is a myth as far as I’m concerned. When you’ve got guys like Michael Waltrip squeezing into those twisted-up cars they had back in the 2000s, and guys like (the late) Justin Wilson driving IndyCars, those were my two main points I hit right off the bat when they told me I was too tall. They knew I had at least done some homework.”
Cindric will have additional homework to do this year as he runs selected NASCAR Cup races in preparation for a move to the No. 21 Wood Brothers Racing Ford in 2022. Before then, he’ll try to fend off the usual suspects in the Xfinity Series—Justin Allgaier, Harrison Burton, Justin Haley, Noah Gragson and Riley Herbst, to name a few—as races for another championship before moving on.
Source: Reid Spencer | NASCAR Wire Service
