After two races in the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs, Austin Cindric enters Bristol Motor Speedway second in points, 43 points above the elimination line.

As everyone expected.

While a bit tongue-in-cheek, Cindric’s body of work through the opening races at Atlanta Motor Speedway and Watkins Glen International has been outstanding enough to secure 79 combined points, propelling the 2022 Daytona 500 champion into strong footing heading into Saturday night’s showdown (7 ET, USA, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App), which will mark the first elimination race of the 2024 postseason.

MORE: Cup Playoffs standings | Bristol schedule

Cindric, 26, doesn’t concern himself with outside opinion, only aiming to execute the best performance from himself and his team each weekend. And as Watkins Glen proved messy for the majority of the playoff field, Cindric left as one of just two postseason contenders with top-10 finishes, providing him with a surprising amount of comfort from elimination before the race even begins.

“What I can’t do is control what happens to other cars in the playoffs with all the factors,” Cindric told NASCAR.com this week via teleconference. “But I think if you would have asked me if it’s realistic that we could get stage points in both races and finish top 10 in both races to start the playoffs, I would have said yeah. So I think we’re absolutely operating within what we’re capable of as a team — let alone I do drive for Team Penske so I feel like the expectation is certainly to be able to go out and perform. And so far, you know, the first two races, our team’s done a pretty good job at bringing fast race cars and being to execute well enough to get some solid points and some solid finishes.”

The 2020 Xfinity Series champion has been through this playoff gambit before at the Cup level, but that was in 2022 — his rookie campaign — after winning the Cup Series’ single biggest regular-season race. This year, he was reunited with crew chief Brian Wilson, who led Cindric’s Xfinity teams at Team Penske and took the reins of the No. 2 Ford for the final 10 races of 2023. Their success was notable at the Xfinity level with 13 wins and a title to their names, but success wasn’t guaranteed at the Cup level. The Next Gen vehicle differs considerably from the Xfinity platform, and Ford introduced a new body for its Dark Horse Mustang in 2024.

None of those challenges have derailed their relationship, Cindric said, adding that the duo picked up where they left off in Xfinity. The goal instead became identifying how to use what made them successful in the past and transforming that into productivity and excellence at the Cup level.

“How do we apply that in what is an exceptionally competitive (series) and a level up?” he said. “Racing in the Cup Series, that has been part of this journey, right? But also at the same time, giving Brian and my team a lot of free rein to to go out and go do their jobs, man. Like, don’t be afraid to fail. That’s been my narrative the whole time. And I think Brian has always been someone that’s provided me a great environment to to really give my feedback and have an open forum to to say how I feel about certain things and educate me on things that I don’t understand.

“I feel like I’ve learned a lot this year — more, probably, than what I have in all my other previous Cup starts. And I think that’s been really productive for us, because once I feel like I can get a handle on how things are working and how we got there and you know why things are the way they are, I feel like that’s when you can start to make steps forward.”

The groundwork for that was laid as soon as the 2023 campaign came to a close, with Cindric working in the sim in tandem with engineers through December and January to be better prepared once February rolled around.

“I would say my approach this offseason (was) probably the most extreme I’ve taken my approach,” Cindric said. “But my mentality is no stone unturned, no distractions, no excuses to why I can’t be successful. And if things don’t work out, things don’t work out. But I feel like I’m in an environment, I work with people, I feel like I believe enough in myself that all these reasons why I feel like I can be successful at the highest level, and I want to see that. I don’t want to miss that opportunity, and that’s certainly a motivator, but otherwise, it’s just kind of the competitor in me as well. Like, I don’t really have an ‘off’ switch.”

In the midst of his third full-time season in the Cup Series, Cindric likely has a long runway ahead of him. But to get where he and everyone else want to be — celebrating on the championship stage as Cup title winners — Cindric knows the path requires adaptability.

“There’s a lot of variety in our schedule. And I think to really think of yourself as a champion in NASCAR this day and age, you have to be good at all types of race tracks,” Cindric said. “And we race on a lot of different types of race tracks, and in order to advance through the playoffs, you have to be good at all types of race tracks. So I think the way to be a champion is to make it through and survive through all types of race tracks.”

That will include surviving Bristol.

Only Christopher Bell, plus-46, enters with a better points cushion than Cindric, with Cindric’s teammate Joey Logano locked into the Round of 12 thanks to his Atlanta triumph. Twelve drivers advance past Saturday’s 500-lap feature, with the bottom four drivers in points ousted from championship contention. That Cindric has such a significant buffer is, well, significant: the Mooresville, North Carolina native has raced three times on the concrete at Thunder Valley to finishes of 20th, 32nd and 31st.

But context matters. His 32nd-place finish last fall was the product of a Lap 69 crash with AJ Allmendinger, who bounced off the Turn 4 wall directly into Cindric’s path and launched the No. 2 Ford skyward, if ever so slightly. His 31st-place run in March was in large part thanks to the severe tire wear that no one expected ahead of the race weekend.

“There’s a lot of unknowns going into this weekend, and a lot of it centers around tire wear and the state of the race track,” Cindric said. “And  just the way the spring race looked, like you mentioned, catching everyone off-guard, as far as the the bulk of tire wear. I mean, since I’ve started racing in stock cars, racing in Bristol, like I’ve never seen anything like that in my life — and I think you have to go into this race in the playoffs expecting that to be the case. So how do you adapt? You asked me about adaptability before. This is a prime example of the teams that are going to be able to adapt.

“Like, OK, everyone got caught out. You have your excuse, right? No one expected this to come. But how do you adapt to it? How do you understand what happened, what you went through, and how to maximize the situation — or is it even going to be the same? Are you going to have to be adaptable in the week leading up to the race? Are you going to have to be adaptable in the hours leading up to the race? What is it going to be? I think you’re going to learn after practice a lot. There’ll be plenty of triggers to really show you know what to expect. So I think that makes this weekend definitely the biggest wild card in this round.”

Few may have expected Cindric to be in this position heading into an elimination race. But the 26-year-old is simply enjoying the ride while trying to maximize every opportunity he gets.

“My only goal set for the year was to make the playoffs. Everything else is a bonus,” he said. “Every everything else is you feel like you’re playing with house money. When you’re in the playoffs, you have a new lease on life. I walked in with just as many if not a little bit more playoff points than the rest of the guys. So we’re in a great position. Just need to go make the most of the opportunity. I think we’re going to learn a lot about ourselves.”