Austin Cindric had 'good talk' with Larson, but Atlanta incident still 'gets blood pressure going a little bit'
Carson Hocevar was the biggest topic of discussion on-track with his run-ins and conversations with multiple drivers at Atlanta Motor Speedway last Sunday, but the late-race incident between Austin Cindric and Kyle Larson for the lead flew under the radar as Ross Chastain spoke to Hocevar on the infield grass.
On Monday, Cindric and Larson spoke over the phone and hashed out their perspectives on the contact off Turn 2 that sent the No. 2 Team Penske Ford spinning along with Daytona 500 winner William Byron.
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'I thought we had a good talk,' Cindric said during a Zoom teleconference Wednesday. 'Kyle took responsibility on the end of the race there, which obviously ended our race. Talking about it doesn't really un-wreck my race car, but I think we're on the same page as to what the expectations are moving forward racing together.'
To schedule the call with Larson, Cindric didn't have Larson's number and said he doesn't find the purpose in having his competitors' phone numbers.
Instead, shortly after the race, Cindric handed a business card to Hendrick Motorsports President and General Manager Jeff Andrews.
'When the race is over, you know, I was helping my guys load the car and as you're standing there, we're the first hauler, and I can't say I was really in a very good head space to want to talk to anybody,' Cindric said. 'But at the same time, knowing that this is something I definitely wanted to discuss with Kyle, I was like 'if somebody comes up to me, I'm just going to give them my phone number and be done with it. I do have a stack of business cards that I brought around with me, like going to the Rolex [24], like as a teenager, handing them out to team owners and team managers. So I still had all of them in my backpack, and I saw Jeff Andrews and Chad Knaus standing over by the 24 hauler, so I figured that was a good way of ensuring that I would get my conversation that would be a lot healthier than just showing up at the race track.'
With Cindric's prowess on drafting tracks, there's an argument to be made he could have two wins already stashed away and a guaranteed bid into the 2025 NASCAR Playoffs.
The fourth-year driver finished eighth in the Daytona 500 and 28th at Atlanta but the results don't show what Cindric was able to do in those events. He led the most laps in the 'Great American Race' and followed it up by leading 47 circuits around the 1.5-mile Georgia track.
Looking deeper into the numbers, Cindric also scored 20 stage points combined in the first two races of the season and according to Racing Insights' loop data, Cindric ran inside the top 15 for all but 17 laps, including the nine he missed after exiting the race following the wreck.
'I felt like I could have said a lot more than I did,' Cindric said. 'I like to honestly keep that behind closed doors so maybe if you felt like I spoke up and I felt like I was holding back, that tells you how upset I was with the situation. It's still something I'm relatively upset about and gets the blood pressure going a little bit. But that's racing. I mean, 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. At this level, race wins don't fall out of the sky.'
While it's still way too early in the season to discuss postseason outlooks for drivers, Cindric's early-season heartbreaks already harken to a playoff-contending driver who had multiple win opportunities taken from him last season — Chris Buescher.
Cindric is nowhere close to any sort of panic button as he sits a healthy fourth in the points standings but with two golden opportunities out of the mix for the No. 2 driver, he will have to battle Larson again and other stars of the sport to get that coveted checkered-flag sticker on his Ford Mustang.
'I know if I want to win in this series, I'm certainly going to have to race against him [Larson] a lot more,' Cindric said. 'I certainly expect us to be at that level throughout the year and I just expect it to be better than what we had on Sunday.'
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