Austin Cindric Has Lofty Perspective Heading Into Cup Rookie Season
After winning the NASCAR Xfinity championship in 2020, Austin Cindric returned to the series last season and won five races en route to another Championship 4 appearance (although he fell short of making it two titles in a row, finishing second).
Cindric also made his first seven starts in the NASCAR Cup Series to prepare for his promotion to NASCAR’s top level, which starts in earnest this week as he takes the reins of the Team Penske No. 2 Ford.
The 23-year-old has been working for this opportunity his entire career. And despite many things being new - new people, a new race team, a new car, new competitors, a couple new tracks on the schedule - the biggest change for him has been realizing he’s now at the top level of the sport.
“I think from my standpoint the job of driving the race car is relatively the same," Cindric said during Wednesday's NASCAR Media Day at Daytona International Speedway. "Obviously, different factors, different team, a whole lot of newness, but otherwise the job is relatively the same.
"But for me it’s actually been a bit of a perspective change because as a young driver you spend your entire career striving to get to the next level. When you’re in late models you want to go race at a national series level. If you’re in trucks you want to be in Xfinity. If you’re in Xfinity, you want to be in Cup.
"Even when you’re at that next level you’re like, ‘OK, what’s after this? What am I striving for next?’ There’s usually like clear-cut areas for you to be at and I’m at the highest level now. That’s it.
“That’s why there are guys that have been doing this for decades at a time. That’s why there are guys that are the absolute best and guys that have gotten here and not been able to do a thing. For me, I have to have that perspective change that there’s nothing after this.”
There’s no shortage of people or resources within the Penske organization to rely on, including teammates Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney and fellow rookie and pseudo-teammate Harrison Burton, who is driving for the Wood Brothers, a partner of Team Penske.
But Cindric has also found himself looking outside the NASCAR garage for perspective.
“I’ve actually found myself paying attention to other sports," he said. "Like, you’ll see college athletes, like Trevor Lawrence – somebody who hardly ever lost a game in his entire career since high school.
"Obviously, he’s put in an organization that isn’t as strong as the best teams, but you try and pay attention to other sports like that and what those processes are like mentality-wise, how does that change different guys. I’ve found that to be fairly valuable because it’s more a controlled environment.
"There’s more details to go off of, where as like in racing you don’t pick and choose the opportunities you get to move up. I’m sure this time last year Harrison (Burton) didn’t think he was gonna be driving the Wood Brothers car because I thought I was driving the Wood Brothers car this time last year.
"This changes so quickly and so rapidly and there are so many external factors that sometimes I actually find mentality-wise other sports are pretty useful in that respect.”
What will it be like battling for the Rookie of the Year title with his friend and teammate Burton?
“I think it’s something that you probably focus on later in the year," Cindric said. "Right now, we’re not competitive with one another. We’ll go workout together and try to one-up each other, but, otherwise, it’s not like we’re hiding information from one another and not talking about things.
"Obviously, we treat each other like teammates, just like Ryan and Joey, so I don’t think it’s a conflict of interest in any way.”