If it could go wrong, it had gone wrong for Austin Cindric through the opening five races of the 2026 Cup Series season. He entered Sunday’s Goodyear 400 buried 30th in the regular-season championship standings.
Finally, Cindric and the No. 2 Team Penske bunch had a clean day at Darlington Raceway and saw the fruits of their labor come to the forefront.
Cindric began the 293-lap race at the rugged, egg-shaped, 1.33-mile oval in the 12th position. Over the course of a caution-free opening stage, he leaped to eighth in the running order, scoring a trio of stage points. He hovered around the top 10 throughout Stage 2, banking another three points for his effort.
The final stage is where Cindric excelled. When the pay window opened, Cindric raced through the field as other drivers faded with ill-handling race cars, as the series ran a higher horsepower and lower downforce aerodynamic package at Darlington. In the closing laps, he passed Joe Gibbs Racing teammates Chase Briscoe and Ty Gibbs, along with Chris Buescher, who led 41 laps earlier in the race.
Throughout the final stage, Cindric kept pace with his Penske teammate Ryan Blaney, who charged from 21st in the running order to a third-place effort, as his other Penske compatriot Joey Logano had a putrid race, running outside the top 30 for the duration of the 400 miles. When the checkered flag waved, Cindric was credited with a fifth-place finish, his first top-10 finish at Darlington in nine starts It snapped a 16-race drought of finishing outside the top 10, dating back to last August at Richmond Raceway.
“I think it’s the first time in a long time that I can say we’ve had three stages that have either gone our way or we executed well,” Cindric told Fox Sports after the race. “The [No.] 2 team has done high-level stuff this year and brought me a lot of fast race cars. It’s long overdue for me and the team for a result that lines up with the performance.”
By earning 38 points, Cindric leaped nine spots in the championship standings now sitting at 21st, 30 points below the cutline, currently held by Logano.
“This is where we need to be,” Cindric added. “Points in every stage and being able to get a top five at a tough place like this. It was a lot of fun.”
Speed hasn’t been an issue for Cindric through the first six weeks of the 2026 season. The No. 2 car was collected in crashes in the opening two races of the season, both at drafting tracks. He followed that up with another pair of finishes outside the top 30, including a DNF at Phoenix Raceway, where he was an innocent bystander of a restart melee while running inside the top 10. It was a middling 19th-place effort at Las Vegas Motor Speedway last weekend that was his best result in the opening handful of races.
Cindric is optimistic that performances like Darlington are in the immediate future. The series heads to Martinsville Speedway next weekend, where the Penske cars are always a threat.
Cindric concluded: “Hopefully, it’s a sign of things to come for this group because I’m really proud of the effort from Daytona to here.”