The pressure significantly increases this weekend for numerous Cup Series drivers as they head to Richmond Raceway. This is not exactly the case for Austin Cindric, who gets to take advantage of his "playoff mode" opportunity.
For the third time in Cindric's Cup Series career, he enters the final stretch of the regular season with a secure spot in the playoffs. He doesn't have to stress about winning his way in at Richmond Raceway this weekend or Daytona International Speedway next weekend. Instead, he and his team can just focus on other important details as they prepare for the Round of 16.
That is the luxury created by a win at Talladega Superspeedway back in April.
"I think in a lot of ways, you can almost call it you have the opportunity to kind of get into playoff mode, if you will, earlier," Cindric said in response to a question from AltDriver on Wednesday.
"From a team mentality standpoint, just as far as really executing, the first two rounds of the playoffs are so much about execution. And it's something that I feel like kind of the early part of the summer, we really struggled to lock down as a team. And so that's kind of where our minds have been."
Cindric has been in this position three times in his Cup Series career. He kicked off his rookie season by winning the Daytona 500 and locking up a spot in the playoffs. He then spent the rest of the regular season gaining experience in the Cup car and trying to accumulate points. Once the playoffs began, he advanced through the opening round. He ended the season 11th in points.
The second time he achieved this was last season. Cindric kicked off the month of June by winning at World Wide Technology Raceway. This gave him and the No. 2 team the opportunity to get into playoff mode early again, and they took advantage by making it through the Round of 16. Their playoff run ended in the Round of 12 after crashes at Kansas Speedway and Talladega Superspeedway.
Compare this to the 2023 season, Cindric's sophomore campaign. He went winless and fell below the cutline during the regular season. This forced the former Xfinity Series champion to focus on wins as they were his only way to reach the playoffs. He fell short of this goal and ended the season 24th in the standings.
"I think every year is a bit different, but at the end of the day, it does give you freedom to put pressure on other things, kind of as we move about the summer," Cindric added.
"But yeah, we are getting into that range of we kind of have to hunker down and absolutely execute and understand where our performance is at and where our strengths and weaknesses are so when it does start up in Darlington, we're ready to go."
Finding these strengths and weaknesses remains an ongoing process for the No. 2 team. After all, Cindric only has one top-10 finish since his win at Talladega Superspeedway. This is something he acknowledged during a sitdown with media members.
He also has eight playoff points, which will help when the points reset, but he will still enter the playoffs closer to the cutline than several other drivers. That is, unless he can lock up more points at Richmond or Daytona while continuing to focus on execution in playoff mode.
"I think any opportunity, especially in the last couple of months, that we've had to try and get playoff points, they've definitely been on the radar," Cindric said. "But I guess past Atlanta, we haven't done that. But I think in the next couple of weeks, any opportunity... the best opportunity is to win races.
"So we've been gunning for that on a lot of events and feel like we've had cars be able to contend for wins here in the last couple of weeks as well. So I think there's been a lot of positive momentum for the team and ramping up at the right time."