Austin Cindric hopes to avoid playing role in Supercars Grand Final result

At the end of the month, Austin Cindric is making his Supercars debut with Tickford Racing in the Adelaide Grand Final. This is the first season that Supercars has implemented its own version of a playoff system. So, Cindric, in his debut, has the experience in that department.

The 2022 Daytona 500 winner is in Australia and learning his way around his Supercars Mustang. This is an exciting venture for Cindric and Team Penske as he represents them in Australia. Scott McLaughlin has been very excited about it all.

While Cindric wants to have the best race possible, he doesn’t want to interfere with how the season finale ends. Either in the race results or the championship standings. Broc Feeney, Chaz Mostert, Will Brown, and Kai Allen are competing for the championship as the final four drivers in the running.

“First of all, I definitely don’t want to have any effect on what happens at the end of the day,” Cindric explained, via Supercars.com. “You know, whether that’s causing a caution or racing guys that are at the most important part of the year that they’ve raced all year for. Very aware of what’s on the line, just because I’ve been on the other side. There’s a ton of similarities between The Finals and our playoff system. How it’s structured, what it rewards.”

Perhaps now more than ever, NASCAR and Supercars are sister series in the world of motorsports. They’ve always been somewhat related, but things have certainly aligned more in the last few years. The Next Gen is designed, in part, after the Supercars Gen3 cars, and now both series have implemented a form of playoffs.

Austin Cindric learning the ropes in Australia

The trip to Australia has been a lengthy one, and Austin Cindric has been getting plenty of experience behind the wheel. He got his first true laps at full speed a couple of days ago. Racing in an ArmorAll and Ford Performance Mustang, Cindric is getting a great deal of experience compared to what outsiders get in NASCAR.

Given how much practice time Cindric will have, I expect a good effort. If his car holds up in the race and he avoids trouble, that’s the secret to success. Braking zones are going to be so important, and likely his biggest gap in talent between himself and the top drivers in Supercars.

Shane van Gisbergen is really the only Supercars driver to come over in the Next Gen era and find immediate success. It’s not like we are seeing a wave of Australians and New Zealanders coming over and winning races. Heck, top-10s are hard enough to earn in the Xfinity Series for most of these drivers. But when you talk about repetition and knowledge of a car, that is hard to overcome as a driver in a new series, but as SVG showed, not impossible.

This is a great opportunity for Austin Cindric. There have been rumors of drivers like Kyle Busch or Connor Zilisch potentially going to Australia to compete in Supercars. Cindric is the one who has actually made it happen. He had a brief flirtation with Supercars in 2015. A decade later, he returns to see if he can hang with the best in the series.