It’s a strange NASCAR world we all inhabit when Austin Cindric, he of the 11 finishes of 20th or worse over 15 races, is now in the playoffs but Kyle Larson and his two wins and industry leading metrics is provisionally not.
That is genuinely no disrespect to Cindric, who absolutely earned his playoff spot, and was rewarded by running up front throughout the entirety of the Enjoy Illinois 300 at Gateway but there is certainly a disparity between the two would-be contenders.
Anyway, Cindric really needed this one.
The back of the baseball card is not particularly flattering to the Team Penske No. 2 driver over the past two and a half seasons. On one hand, he began his full-time career by winning the Daytona 500 and the current bookend is Sunday’s victory.
In the middle is a lot of digression rather than progress. He finished 24th in the standings last year and was 20th entering the weekend with an average finish that has climbed up each season. Cindric doesn’t shy away from the reality of his stats either.
“That’s not good enough to race and drive at Team Penske,” Cindric said. “I know that. No one has to tell me that. There’s no meeting that has to be set in place. I take that very personally. The opportunity that I have to be able to go win at the highest level, the intensity that I carry every day when I wake up, go to the race shop.
“I cut out every other distraction in my life good, bad or indifferent. If that makes me a horribly rounded person, which is does in a lot of ways, all I care about is what I do between the walls of a racetrack.”
Cindric is the son of Team Penske president Tim Cindric, which adds a whole additional layer of pressure and expectation to overcome. With that said, even beyond his father, the younger Cindric has the support of Roger Penske and Walt Czarnecki, the vice chairman of The Penske Corporation.
“I will tell you, he has not lost his desire,” Czarnecki said. “This is a reaffirming situation, circumstance for him today. In fact, we just talked about it in Victory Lane. We’ve never lost faith in Austin Cindric, I promise you.”
And it’s not like Cindric doesn’t have the potential of a much higher ceiling with his 13 Xfinity Series victories and 2020 series championship. The decision to make a crew and crew chief change for Cindric in August, trading Brian Wilson for Jeremy Bullins with Wood Brothers, was a reflection of that faith and not disappointment.
So, is this some kind of potential turning point?
“I’m too much of a realistic guy, especially with myself, to think that this is just going to make me drive harder and be a better race car driver moving forward,” Cindric said. “I can promise you I’ve been giving it absolutely everything I have to run 20th some weeks.”
Cindric now has 11 weeks to focus entirely on the playoffs. They’re in. Once again, the floor on Cindric’s season is 16th but at an organization that has won the championship each of the past two years with Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney, now it’s time to raise the ceiling.
He knows it too.
“I’m an internally motivated person,” Cindric said. “This is not fun if I’m not winning. As you can imagine, it’s not been very fun for a little while. That’s the standard I hold. I don’t want to find myself in a position to be okay with 10th and be okay. ‘Hey, I finished in the top 10, that’s an awesome day.’
“No, that’s 10th. That’s good, that’s a step forward, but it’s not where I want to be. It’s not the level in which I prepare. It’s not the level in which my team expects to perform.”
Larson in Limbo
Is this really that challenging of a decision, NASCAR?
Yes, Kyle Larson missed the Coca-Cola 600, choosing instead to remain at the Indianapolis 500 once a rain delay created an overlap between the two but the intent has to matter here. The intent was to run both and it took an act of god that the latter didn’t materialize.
For one, playoff waivers have been handed out for all manner of reasons, both medical and behavioral.
The optics of permitting drivers who intentionally right rear hooks another competitor into the wall, which is a perfectly fine decision, but not permitting Larson due to the worst-case weather scenario would be horrible optics.
Tony Stewart missed the first eight races in 2016 because he suffered a spinal fracture during an off-season ATV expedition in the desert and received a waiver.
But this is also the same sanctioning body that fined Ricky Stenhouse $75,000, the same amount issued to Hendrick Motorsports crew chiefs for modifying the greenhouse on a single source supplied car, for throwing a punch in the All-Star Race.
These are not equal ‘actions detrimental to stock car racing’ infractions.
And they did this three months after NASCAR president Steve Phelps told FOX Sports this is kind of thing they want to ‘let go.’
So, all of this really tracks, unfortunately.
What this seemingly boils down to is a perceived slight that Larson and Hendrick said all week, with the storm becoming more and more likely, that the Coca-Cola 600 was the priority and then doing the exact opposite.
The perception is that Larson chose the Indianapolis 500 over the Coca-Cola 600 — a perception that one meant more than the other.
This is the Indianapolis 500, legitimately the most storied motorsport event in the world, and one that grows NASCAR’s stature with Larson participating it. It is every bit as important as taking Garage56 to Le Mans and doing it hand-in-hand with Hendrick Motorsports.
Do not be intellectually inconsistent.
When Phelps took over as NASCAR president, he said the league needed to do a better job of co-existing with other disciplines with the goal of growing everyone simultaneously.
“If someone is a fan of racing, we believe they can be a fan of our racing,” Phelps told Short Track Scene. “At the same time, we may be the pinnacle of racing from a popularity standpoint, but we can learn from them, they can learn from us, and we can promote each other in a far better way.”
Is denying this waiver request a far better way, Steve?
Larson’s peers are seemingly near-unanimously in favor of the extension. Chevrolet wants it. Roger Penske, who while owning IMS, IndyCar and the Indianapolis 500 also owns a rival NASCAR team, and he wants Larson racing head-to-head with his drivers for the championship come September.
Ultimately, a decision to decline the waiver is also telling fans to tune out, and if there is one thing NASCAR generally always caves to — it’s the wants of the fan-base.
Ultimately, NASCAR can choose to be a leader in the industry, with a wide ranging vision, one that recognizes both the circumstances of what happened last Sunday and how it can choose to grow motorsports holistically … or it can be a petulant jilted lover.
This isn’t that challenging.
What it all meant
Sure, Christopher Bell and Adam Stevens benefited from the stout Joe Gibbs Racing flat track package and had the car to beat but it’s also getting hard to ignore the very real gains being made by Ford Performance across the board over the past month.
It was not an enjoyable first third of the season for Penske, RFK Racing, Front Row Motorsports and Stewart-Haas Racing. The new Mustang Dark Horse body style gave the entire Blue Oval fits.
Ford is in a challenging place more often than not because the Chevrolet body is the balance of downforce and drag while the Mustang went towards a more minimal drag package. With the Dark Horse, it strived for more of a balanced approach, but it reset their notebooks entirely from a body map data standpoint.
But they’re coming around now, on all tracks, with Brad Keselowski winning at Darlington, Joey Logano winning the All-Star Race and now Cindric winning at Gateway, reflective of a variety of track types.
Say what you will even about the old Mustang body Ford used the past two years, but the entire manufacturer started off slow in each of the past two years, but really came on strong at the end and took advantage of a friendly playoff schedule the includes short tracks and road courses, the strength of their program.
Intermediates are still their weakest area but, again, they’re coming around.
Hendrick Motorsports and Joe Gibbs Racing are still the class of the field, but in this era of extreme parity, it seems like Ford’s flagships are joining the party into the summer months.
Richard Childress Racing showed signs of renewed life with both Kyle Busch leading laps before his crash with Kyle Larson and Austin Dillon finishing sixth.
Michael McDowell led early from the pole but just wasn’t quite the same in traffic but it’s hard to count out them winning, maybe even as early as this weekend on a road course, to get back into the Round of 16 for the second year in a row.
There’s just a lot of parity and a lot of intrigue here in the middle portion of the 2024 campaign.
Logano and Busch, both two-time champions, find themselves outside of the playoffs as of right now.
But once again, the fate of Larson, second in the standings and second in playoff points, continues to be a subject that could change the entire course of the championship. Championship(s) even as no playoff waiver would then leave the No. 5 racing for just the owners championship.
Layers and layers of narrative upon reaching June.
Playoff grid
Denny Hamlin 3W
William Byron 3W
Kyle Larson 2W (?)
Christopher Bell 2W
Chase Elliott W
Tyler Reddick W
Brad Keselowski W
Austin Cindric W
Daniel Suarez W
Martin Truex +132
Ty Gibbs +107
Alex Bowman +59
Ross Chastain +59
Ryan Blaney +47
Bubba Wallace +13
Chris Buescher +10
—
Chase Briscoe -10
Joey Logano -13
Kyle Busch -20
Josh Berry -104
Carson Hocevar -109
Todd Gilliland -110
Noah Gragson -113
Michael McDowell -113
John Hunter Nemechek -140
Erik Jones -140
Ricky Stenhouse -145
Daniel Hemric -151
Ryan Preece -157
Austin Dillon -158
Justin Haley -163
Corey Lajoie -174
Harrison Burton -213
Zane Smith -232
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.