Long: Daytona 500 win fulfills ‘racer’s dream’ for Austin Cindric

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Austin Cindric arrived at Daytona International Speedway this week only to find his name misspelled on a sign marking his garage stall.

He will leave with his name forever marked in cement.

Such are the spoils of a Daytona 500 winner, something that the 23-year-old Cup rookie can say he is, while former champions Tony Stewart, Kyle Busch and Brad Keselowski can not make the same claim. 

Sunday’s winner is the same person who was collected in a crash after the first lap of his first Daytona Camping World Truck Series race in 2017. The next year, he made 10 laps in his first Daytona Xfinity race before he crashed.

Cindric admits that if someone told him then that he would win the Daytona 500 one day, “I probably would have said, ‘Bull—-.”

Cindric overcame those early woes and improved as a driver. He won last year’s Xfinity season-opener at Daytona and followed that a year later by winning the biggest Cup race of the season in just his eighth series start. 

His success is due to his work ethic. Although he is the son of Team Penske President Tim Cindric, he got no special favors.

“Quite honestly, if he didn’t get the job done, we might have changed it, but he came along, I think, as well as he could under the circumstances initially,” team owner Roger Penske said. 

Cindric said he didn’t listen to those who said he got his ride with Penske based on his last name.

“I’m not an externally motivated person, and I’m not an externally intimidated person,” Cindric said. “My head is pretty much in the game 24/7. I don’t think about much, anything else, except for racing. 

“I don’t have much of a social life. I hardly do anything else but go to the race shop and spend time either staring at my race cars or