Team Penske NASCAR Xfinity Race Report
Track: Dover International Speedway
Race: Allied Steel Buildings 200
Date: May 4, 2019
No. 22 Menards/Richmond Ford Mustang – Austin Cindric
Start: 3rd
Stage 1: 5th
Stage 2: 6th
Finish: 6th
Status: Running
Laps Completed: 200/200
Laps Led: 0
Driver Point Standings (behind first): 4th (-81)
Notes:
Austin Cindric racked up his eighth top-10 finish of the 2019 NASCAR Xfinity Series season Saturday afternoon at Dover International Speedway. Cindric finished sixth in the Allied Steel Buildings 200, his best finish in three Xfinity Series races at Dover and has now finished ninth or better all three career starts at the Monster Mile. Cindric is fourth in the series driver standings, 81 points behind the leader.
Cindric began his day Saturday morning at Dover with a solid third-place effort in qualifying. Stage 1 of the 200-lap event was a 45-lap sprint that ran caution free. Cindric fell in line fourth at the initial start and was credited with a fifth-place finish when the segment concluded. He pitted during the stage caution for four tires and restarted seventh on lap 54.
Stage 2 was even shorter – a 38-lap dash. Cindric finished sixth when the stage concluded on lap 90. Under the stage caution, Cindric said the balance on his No. 22 Mustang was fine; he just needed the track position. He pitted on lap 94 for four tires and an air pressure adjustment. Solid work on the pit lane by the Menards/Richmond pit crew moved him up to fifth position for the restart on lap 99.
Cindric was running fifth on lap 130 when he radioed his team that once again he was loose. The third caution on lap 155 set up another round of pit stops. He made a four-tire stop on lap 156 and restarted fifth when the race went green three laps later.
Two cautions and increasingly chaotic restarts over the final 23 laps yielded mixed results for Cindric. He remained fifth following the fourth caution on lap 177, but the final restart on lap 186 wasn’t as kind. He got loose off Turn 2, and lost fifth-position to Cole Custer, dropping him to sixth at the checkered flag.
Quote: “I’d say it was a pretty quiet day for the Menards/Richmond team. I was very busy inside the No. 22 Mustang today. We had decent short-run speed but we were fairly loose on the long run. I was so loose on the final restart that I spun out but didn’t go all the way around. I’ve got some things to learn for the fall but to run quietly inside the top-five or six all day at Dover is a solid race.”
