Austin Cindric’s mindset for the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs might be different than the rest of the field.
He feels like he’s got nothing to lose.
“I don’t really feel a ton of pressure. I feel like we’re playing with house money,” Cindric said during playoff media day. “I couldn’t really ask for more based on the season we’ve had, so I’m excited for this great opportunity and anything from here, I feel like, is a bonus. I’m not saying that just to sound content. We have an opportunity to go all the way and that’s exciting.”
It’s certainly been an up-and-down season for the third-year driver from Mooresville, N.C., but he made the playoffs the most straightforward way possible – with a win. Sitting 20th in points heading to World Wide Technology (Ill.) Raceway, Cindric capitalized on a fuel miscalculation from teammate Ryan Blaney with two laps to go for his second career victory.
On the other side of the coin, he has just three top 10s with an average finish of 20.6. Cindric finished the regular season 19th in the championship standings.
“I think there are some pretty obvious highs and lows that the stat line does and doesn’t highlight, but from a team standpoint I’m proud of everyone sticking to the process and kind of the narrative that we’ve laid out to start the year,” Cindric said. “We’ve got a lot of young guys and a lot of roles that they haven’t been at this high level for that long, including myself, and I feel like it’s a lot of fun to have a team that young, but sometimes it takes a lot of patience, just like with having a younger driver and an inexperienced driver.
“Patience has probably been the name of the game for me because I kind of want it yesterday type thing, and that’s the expectation, but to have the opportunity in the playoffs and have a lot of the correct pieces is just about putting the picture together on a more consistent basis.”
Cindric enters the unpredictable opening round of the playoffs as the No. 10 seed, two points above the cutline. But while many drivers are worried about the first two races, the Team Penske driver is more concerned about the final race – Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway.
Throughout his career, Cindric has shown superspeedway prowess. He won the Daytona 500 as a rookie, and in the spring event at Atlanta Motor Speedway, he finished fourth. So he’s not too concerned about Sunday’s opener in Hampton Ga.
Cindric comes from a road racing background, which could give him an inside edge at Watkins Glen (N.Y.) Int’l next weekend – especially since he participated in the summer tire test. Goodyear is expected to bring a tire with multiple seconds of falloff over a run.
Because the spring race at Bristol featured extreme tire degregation and many failures, the 0.5-mile short track is his biggest worry – even though the playoff race could play out differently. He feels comfortable there, but the outside factors concern him the most.
“Bristol is definitely the most unpredictable track in this round, let alone just because of the tires from the spring race, but that’s just how it’s been over the last couple of years,” he said. “It’s a track that I really love going to. It’s a track that I feel confident at, but there are a lot of factors there, whether if that’s been mechanical failures with the car or obviously the tire issues in the spring. You want to be as secure as you can going into that one.”
Cindric chalked up his mindset for the next 10 weeks to how he views his golf swing. A new golfer, he said he’s close to breaking 100 for the first time. But he’d love to break through with a deep playoff run, as well.
“I feel like both my golf game and my playoff mentality to get to the next step is to limit mistakes,” Cindric said. “I have the ability to make contact with the ball and make the damn thing go straight. Every once in a while, I’ll take a chunk of earth out before I ever even touch the ball.
“The first two rounds, in my opinion, are about execution, not making mistakes. The second round, that’s where race teams have to come on, find a gear, win a race. So, I think that’s really as simple as it can be. For me, that’s the mentality. We get to the Round of 8, we have to go figure out how to win a race, but until then we have to really eliminate mistakes.”