Carson Hocevar made contact with Austin Cindric entering the frontstretch chicane at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval, all but ending Cindric’s chances at advancing in the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs.
On Lap 32, Hocevar entered Turn 16 with too much speed, spinning through the corner and contacting Cindric. Both drivers suffered damage and came down pit road for repairs. Cindric, the Team Penske driver, fell 22 laps down, ultimately ending his playoff hopes as he finished 36th.
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It was the second incident that Hocevar had partial responsibility for, contacting Kyle Busch in Turn 1 of Lap 1 as the Richard Childress Racing driver hit the wall and fell several laps down.
“Just a shame that we got hit so perfectly, that KO’d all of my rear suspension,” Cindric said after the race. “You don’t want three races to define your season. It’s amazing how much everything ebbs and flows throughout the year. You feel like for a month, you can’t do anything wrong, and for three weeks that matter the most, you feel like you can’t do anything right. It’s just how the cookie crumbles and you gotta be on it, and we’ll learn.”
Before the Stage 2 mishap, Cindric had already suffered a pair of issues in the backstretch chicane. He blew the corner at Lap 9, serving his stop-and-go penalty on the racing surface before falling to 23rd position. Moments later, Cindric went for a spin in Turn 3 off the nose of Justin Haley, forcing him to pit road with scuffed tires.
“It’s such a long race here, like, in those moments, I didn’t feel like I was out of it,” Cindric said, reflecting back to before his tangle with Hocevar. “I just wanted to not put us in a situation where we’re completely out of it, just knowing the strategies were going to get super crazy with the super long run, having the [tire] falloff we had [Saturday], knowing how big the windows were.”
But in a sense, those moments were like a microcosm of Cindric’s entire Round of 12, finishing no better than 17th (New Hampshire) in three races. Though the contact from the Spire Motorsports driver essentially ended his championship hopes, the fourth-year driver from Mooresville, North Carolina, shouldered most of the blame.
“I mean, this round was definitely tough for us. I mean, never really feel like we even had the speed to get stage points in any of the races,” he said. “But I also feel like I take a lot of that with having a qualifying lap each week that probably would have put me in the top 10 and slipping up and not being able to execute. I feel like I displayed some of my car control more than I displayed speed this round, so I feel like that falls on me.”
Although eliminated, Cindric still has more to look forward to in the season’s final four races. After Las Vegas Motor Speedway next Sunday (5:30 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App), it’s s trip to Talladega Superspeedway, a track that he won at in the spring.
And while the stats might not show it, earning just five top 10s so far, Cindric believes that it’s been his best Cup Series season to date.
“There’s a lot of races this year that we had speed and a lot of capability and execution to try and contend for race wins,” Cindric said, reflecting on the first 32 races. “There’s been so many races that we’ve run exceptionally well. You think about Indy and Iowa, even Richmond, places that feel like we had opportunities taken away from us in some respects, and that’s going to happen, but you want to consistently run well.
“I would agree that this has definitely been my best season to date – it doesn’t feel that way today, but I think it’s definitely something to build on.”