Austin Cindric intentionally keeps a very limited supply of his fellow Cup drivers’ phone numbers, but he needed some digits Sunday after crashing out at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
Kyle Larson’s, of course.
So as Cindric was helping load his battered No. 2 Ford into the hauler, the Team Penske driver spotted Hendrick Motorsports executives Jeff Andrews and Chad Knaus nearby. Reaching into his backpack for a stack of business cards he had been carrying since begging for Rolex 24 at Daytona rides nearly a decade ago as a teenager, Cindric slipped his contact information to Larson’s superiors with a message: Call me.
“I figured that was a good way of ensuring that I would get my conversation and that would be a lot healthier than just showing up at the racetrack,” Cindric, 26, told reporters in a videoconference Tuesday afternoon. “Sometimes, guys will reach out to you, and sometimes guys won’t. I don’t have a super close relationship with Kyle by any means, so it’s not like he’s got my number. I guess that was my way of saying, ‘Hey, we really need to talk about this,’ in a way that was going to be not emotional for me because at the time I was pretty frustrated.”
Cindric soon had a Monday afternoon call scheduled with Larson, who accepted the blame for squeezing him into the wall while battling for the lead.
“I thought we had a good talk,” Cindric said. “Kyle took responsibility on the end of the race, which obviously ended our race and kind of talking about it doesn’t really unwreck my race car. But I think we’re on the same page as what the expectations are moving forward racing together. I think it’s important. It’s about all I can influence is talking about it, but I hope to race Kyle, and I certainly have a lot of respect. But I know if I want to win in this series, I’m certainly gonna have to race against him a lot more, so I certainly expect us to be at that level throughout the year, and I expect it to be better than what we had on Sunday.”
In what Cindric admits is a “social sport” in which driver text chains are humming nonstop, it might seem surprising that he would need to obtain any driver’s number. Particularly a star such as Larson who is expected to race in his second consecutive Indianapolis 500 this season (the son of Team Penske president Tim Cindric has been attending the Indy 500 since childhood).
But Austin Cindric admittedly is more of an introvert.
“I do not have many of my competitors’ phone numbers,” he said. “First of which, I’m not a very social person. I don’t view getting to know people away from the racetrack, if anything it’s a competitive distraction for me. I have people that I’m friendly with. I have guys that I enjoy spending time with. I feel like I have a good relationship with my teammates on and off the racetrack, but I’d say the majority of the Cup field I’m not in contact with at all.
“Honestly, it doesn’t take much to realize. I mean you look at the driver intro stage and you kind of see who likes talking to each other and most of the time I’m just sitting at the front of it waiting for the race to start, so that’s kind of the only thing that really matters to me. Because at the end of the day I think it’s just easier for me to separate it all. If we’re just competitors and that’s the only relationship that exists, I feel like that’s a lot simpler for me.”
All that said, the call with Larson still was “fantastic” for sharing perspectives even if Cindric still left feeling a little aggrieved.
“It’s still something I’m relatively upset about and gets the blood pressure going a little bit, but that’s racing,” the 2022 Daytona 500 winner said. “I’m not the only one that’s been in those positions and felt like they haven’t been able to capitalize on an opportunity to win a race, or had somebody else be the cause of that. It doubles down with it being two weeks in a row and at this level, race wins don’t fall out of the sky, so you’ve got to work at them and it’s hard to put yourself in that position.”
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— FOX: NASCAR (@NASCARONFOX) February 23, 2025
If not for the late wrecks at Atlanta and the Daytona 500, Cindric easily could be unbeaten to open the 2025 season.
His strong performance still has him ranked fourth in the Cup points standings, but that’s hardly a consolation after narrowly missing two golden opportunities to lock into the playoffs.
“It certainly is frustrating,” he said. “Even when people say, ‘Oh, you’re still fourth in points.’ That’s just as much of a kick in between the legs as it is losing all of those points we could have had. So it’s difficult, but that’s just the sport that we’re in. I’d rather have the big opportunities become missed opportunities than not have the opportunities at all, and my team has done an exceptional job. I’ve been able to match that effort at these races, and I see no reason why we can’t continue to do that.”
Cindric said he began putting the disappointment behind him shortly after handing off his business card.
“It’s why I love having a thirty-plus race schedule because I can just absolutely go and dive head first into my prep work,” he said. “If I’m going to use Atlanta as the example, by the time our plane landed from a relatively short flight I was already done with all of my notes and my debriefs and had all of my thoughts documented for the team on the event.
“By Tuesday I’m completely over at least the work that needs to be done for it, so that’s kind of how I process those things. I think by the time I get to the racetrack it’s back to business and there’s plenty of other things to focus on.”
