DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Who on the planet is Austin Cindric?

Because the 2022 Daytona 500 floor its approach to the checkered flag, lastly ending a 3½-hour enduro race that put a dozen automobiles behind the wall and noticed 25 of the 40 automobiles within the discipline caught up in accidents (that is simply per the official field rating, as just about each automotive ended the night time with harm), the American auto race that attracts extra eyeballs than some other had lots of people screaming at their TVs for the names they knew.

Bubba Wallace, Kyle Busch, Brad Keselowski, Chase Elliott, even defending race champion Michael McDowell, loads of recognizable racers had been within the combine for the victory.

However Elliott completed tenth, Keselowski ninth, McDowell seventh and Busch sixth. Wallace, for the second time, got here up one spot in need of glory. The winner? A racer all these informal Daytona 500-only NASCAR viewers doubtless had by no means heard of. Now they’ve.

So, who on the planet is Austin Cindric? He is the 2022 Daytona 500 champion, that is who. However do not be ashamed or confused when you’d by no means heard of him earlier than Sunday night time. Avid NASCAR followers have been listening to about him since he was a child. However for the remainder of you, here is the what-you-need-to-know now that he is made himself identified.

Cindric is humorous. “I did not pack an additional pair of underwear and now I’ve to go do media for a number of days, so I need to not have been that assured in the present day.” Cindric talks super-fast. He stated that final underwear sentence in 1.2 seconds flat. He loves his mother. “She’s the spine of my profession. She made brownies for my crew and she or he tucked me in nonetheless in my firesuit after I would wrecked out for the third race in a row.”

He’s a 23-year-old NASCAR Cup Sequence Rookie of the Yr candidate. That is proper, he is a rookie. On Sunday, he was making his eight Cup begin. Ever. Once they engrave his title onto the Harley J. Earl Trophy, he might be there by doing one thing solely 9 of the 64 drivers listed on the award have completed earlier than, incomes his first profession Cup Sequence victory within the sport’s greatest occasion.

He received the 2020 championship in NASCAR’s second-largest nationwide circuit, the Xfinity Sequence, and got here inside .03 seconds of profitable a second consecutive title final fall. In 133 profession Xfinity begins, he earned 13 wins and completed within the prime ten 66% of the time. That is good. Like, superb.

Cindric has at all times been good behind the wheel. So good that he has managed to outrun, for probably the most half anyway, grumblings of a silver spoon racing life, the beneficiary of NASCAR nepotism.

You see, his father is Tim Cindric, the longtime president of Crew Penske. That is the group Austin Cindric drives for. His maternal grandfather, Jim Trueman, was a longtime IndyCar group proprietor, profitable the 1986 Indy 500 with driver Bobby Rahal, lower than two weeks earlier than Trueman died of most cancers, 12 years earlier than Austin was born. His paternal grandfather, Carl Cindric, was a Gasoline Alley staple, constructing legendary Offenhauser engines.

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Should you fastidiously scan pictures taken within the Indy 500 winner’s circle within the early 2000’s, you possibly can catch glimpses of a little bit Austin Cindric operating round. He famously practically knocked over the Borg-Warner Trophy throughout a Helio Castroneves picture session at Indy’s yard of bricks.

However not solely was he not escorted right into a top-shelf trip by his father, dad tried to speak him out of racing in any respect.

“I at all times instructed him that there was by no means going to be a parachute from mother and pop,” Tim Cindric stated Sunday night time. “He was in all probability ten years outdated and racing actually wasn’t the street I wished him to take. I instructed him when he was in highschool that we might been capable of assist him as much as then, however he was going to should go to school or if he went racing, he’d have to search out his personal approach in racing.”

Roger Penske, the 18-time Indy 500-winning and now three-time Daytona 500-winning group proprietor, confirmed that story as reality. However he additionally recalled seeing child Austin taking part in with racecars in his bed room again house in Ohio. And he remembered when preteen Austin earned his first win within the Bandolero Sequence. Penske and longtime righthand man Walt Czarnecki weren’t there for that first win, however they confirmed up the subsequent week and he received once more.

“I’ve identified him his complete life and seen him develop up. He is household,” stated Penske, who additionally celebrated his eighty fifth birthday Sunday. “However I believe that anybody who is aware of me additionally is aware of that I am not within the enterprise of simply placing folks in race automobiles as a result of I do know them, or I’m near them. They should carry out, plain and easy. He has carried out. If we did not put him in certainly one of our automobiles, another person would have achieved it.”

“He has been probably the most influential particular person in my life exterior of my dad and mom, and that is not about racing,” Cindric stated of the boss, whom he shortly stated was not simply that, his boss. “It is how he treats different folks. It is how he treats his household. I be taught from him on a regular basis. To earn his belief to drive his automobiles, it is the best praise I may ever have.”

Cindric raced sportscars. He received a Truck Sequence race in 2017. Then he obtained a shot within the Xfinity Sequence trip and he wasn’t nice. “Should you had come to me in 2018 after I spun out in entrance of all the Xfinty discipline (at Watkins Glen) and stated, ‘Hey, someday you may win the Daytona 500!’ I might have stated, bulls—.”

It took him 54 tries to lastly win a race. Then he received 12 instances over the subsequent 79 races. When Keselowski, who employed Cindric to drive for his Truck Sequence group, left Crew Penske after the 2021 season to change into a driver-owner with Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing, Penske determined to place Cindric within the legendary No. 2 Ford, made well-known by Rusty Wallace, Kurt Busch and Keselowski.

He is batting 1.000 in that automotive.

“Sure, he is had numerous alternatives,” Cindric’s crew chief, Jeremy Bullins, defined Sunday night time. “When he is gotten alternatives, he taken benefit of it. He is received. He research. He works so exhausting.”

It brings to thoughts a fantastic quote a few years in the past from Richard Petty, who obtained his first Cup Sequence trip through his NASCAR Corridor of Fame father Lee after which went on to place his personal son and grandson in automobiles raced underneath the household banner: “That race automotive could not care much less what your final title is or who your daddy is. You possibly can both drive it or you possibly can’t.”

Austin Cindric can drive it. Those that intently observe and make their dwelling in motorsports, they already knew that. So did Roger Penske. Now, the entire world is aware of it.

“I am not an externally motivated particular person or externally intimidated particular person,” he stated Sunday night time when requested about those that have whispered about development coming due to his final title. “My head’s within the recreation just about 24/7. I do not take into consideration the rest however racing. I haven’t got a lot of a social life. I simply go the raceshop… if there’s something left to show, I am undecided what it’s.”