LINCOLN, Ala (EETV) – Austin Cindric continues to make his presence known on superspeedways, winning his third Cup Series race and second at a superspeedway. Cindric beat Ryan Preece to the line by a hair, 0.022 to be exact.
Team Penske and Ford have been one of, if not the strongest, teams at superspeedways, and today was no different. Penske has led the most laps at superspeedways lately but has come short every time, until today. With his win, Cindric is locked into the playoffs and has almost dug himself out of a self-imposed hole from a 50-point penalty earlier in the season.
“It’s kinda been a rollercoaster,” said Cindric. “It’s been one thing keeping us from excellence in a lot of weekends in a row. You don’t know until you get to the last couple feet of these races and to win it under green and do it all the right ways as a team at the end. I don’t see a more complete team win.”
Saving fuel was on everybody’s mind when the green flag dropped, but early in stage one, it became apparent that Toyota had other plans. Several Toyota drivers and teams gambled on pit stop time to get their hotrods to the front and control the race. Forcing the others to join them or fall behind. The bold strategy looked as if it would pay off when, early in the race, Toyota claimed the top six spots.
“We were the only ones willing to just race this thing out, run wide open and see what happens to try and make a show of it,” Denny Hamlin told Fox Sports.
Toyota’s strategy came to a screeching halt, quite literally, when Brad Keselowski and Kyle Busch got tangled up trying to slow down and make it onto pit road. This collision also collected Ryan Blaney.
While getting up to speed on the next restart, Christopher Bell was turned, unintentionally, by teammate Hamlin. With no warning and nowhere to go, Chris Buescher became a casualty of this racing incident.
“It’s just not racing,” said Buescher post-incident. “I’ve been a part of those and I’ve hated every one of ‘em… That’s not what we’re here to do for ourselves as racers, as competitors and for our partners; it’s not right.
“You gotta race and accept you’re going to have moments like this, but that one felt a lot more preventable.”
Bell’s thoughts on the matter were more empathetic.
“Denny’s a very experienced driver, he knows what’s going on, said Bell. “You have to push. I can’t say that enough. You have to push to be successful, and it’s just a Russian Roulette every time you get on the race track here. If you’re the lead car, you better hope the guy behind you takes care of you.”
The “Big One” that has become synonymous with this track was absent. In fact, the final 62 green flag laps of this race are the most green flag laps without a caution since July 2004, at Daytona International Speedway.
Following the race, both Preece and Joey Logano were disqualified after failing inspection. Preece had three shims on his spoiler, and Logano was missing a bolt on his spoiler brace.
Looking forward, the Cup Series will be in action for the next 27 weeks. Next up is the W2rth 400 presented by LIQUI MOLY at Texas Motor Speedway on Sunday, May 4, airing on Fox Sports One at 2:30 p.m. CT.
