Austin Cindric sat second behind Kyle Larson about 35 laps into Sunday’s Bank of America 400 at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
The run arrives in the middle of a hot streak for the ninth-place Chase driver, but Charlotte has bitten him before and Larson still holds the lead.
Rain wiped out practice and qualifying Saturday, so NASCAR built the lineup from its rule book. Larson started on the pole, Chase Briscoe second, Tyler Reddick third, Ryan Blaney fourth and Cindric fifth, according to NASCAR.com.
Recent form makes the early pace less of a shock. Cindric finished second at Kansas on Sept. 27 and fourth at Las Vegas on Oct. 4, and he has placed 13th or better in each of his last eight starts, according to NASCAR.com.
“He’s been really strong here recently, and they’ve been executing solid races,” teammate Joey Logano said, as quoted by Sturniolo. Logano, a three-time Cup champion, named speed as the biggest change.
Those results reversed a sluggish start on 1.5-mile tracks. Cindric had no top-10 finishes at 1.5-mile ovals before Kansas, with a 19.4 average finish.
Charlotte produced his worst result of that stretch. He started eighth in the Coca-Cola 600 and finished 38th, according to NASCAR.com, after he spun in Turn 2 before Zilisch hit him.
Team Penske Driver Austin Cindric’s Career Background
Cindric, 28, was born Sept. 2, 1998, and calls Mooresville, North Carolina, home. He drives the No. 2 Ford for Team Penske with crew chief Brian Wilson, and he confirmed Saturday that he returns in 2027, according to Sturniolo.
His climb began below NASCAR’s top tier. He won a Truck Series race at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park in 2017 and became the youngest winner in IMSA’s Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge. In what is now the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series, he claimed the 2020 championship and finished with 13 wins, five of them in 2021, according to NASCAR.com.
The Cup Series followed. Cindric won the 2022 Daytona 500 in his first full season, becoming the first rookie to do so, according to Team Penske, and took Rookie of the Year honors. He added wins at World Wide Technology Raceway in June 2024 and Talladega Superspeedway in the spring of 2025.
Austin Cindric’s Chances of Catching Kyle Larson
As he dropped to P9 coming out of the restart, Cindric saw what looked like a neck-and-neck battle with defending champion Kyle Larson fade away, leaving him with little better chance of catching Larson today than he has in the Chase itself.
Larson holds the edge in recent results. He leads the Chase standings by 40 points, opened the playoffs with five straight top-five finishes that include two victories, and won the 2021 Coca-Cola 600 at this track, according to ArkansasOnline.com‘s race preview.
Cindric has no wins this season. He has four top-fives and nine top-10s through 31 races, with a career-best 15.7 average finish, according to NASCAR.com.
Blaney, the 2023 Cup champion, pointed to Kansas as proof of how close the No. 2 team has come. “I think one thing goes different in Kansas, he wins that race,” Blaney said, as quoted by Sturniolo.
Charlotte opens a five-race run for Cindric. “We’ve got to keep it rolling for the next five weeks,” he said, according to Sturniolo.
Who is NASCAR Driver Austin Cindric? Can He Catch Kyle Larson Today?