DEARBORN - Austin Cindric was looking for someone to blame.
After running only six laps last week at Bristol Motor Speedway in the NASCAR XFINITY Series race, Cindric found himself pressed up against the outer wall, a victim of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. While coming off turn four, Ross Chastain blew a right-front tire, which sent his car up the track where it clipped Cindric’s No. 22 Odyssey Battery Mustang and ended his night before it hardly began.
He was frustrated, but also well aware that those are the kinds of things that happen when you pack 37 cars on a half-mile bullring with 28 degrees of banking in the corners. The familiar refrain of, “That’s Bristol,” is often heard by drivers as they exit the infield care center, so with nothing left to do, Cindric took solace in the only thing he could as a three-hour drive back home stared him straight in the face.
“I think the biggest positive of this is I’m driving a Ford Mustang on mountain roads on the way back, so that will definitely be the highlight of my day,” Cindric said after talking about the accident. “I’m just trying to figure out what playlist needs to be the correct one.”
For some Mustang enthusiasts, they might say there’s no wrong answer to that issue, especially when you’re taking on the many twists and turns the East Tennessee landscape provides. And as far as Cindric is concerned, there’s no better car in the marketplace.
“I have fallen in love with that car,” began Cindric, who is currently driving a 2019 5.0L Mustang. “I have driven a lot the last couple of years, but it’s so simple. Everything is very applicable in your hands and you have a really good feel as far as where the car is out on the road, but it’s not too much. It’s not too much to do it every day and that’s what I like about it.”
But, if you’re going to get Cindric behind the wheel of a Mustang, or any other car for that matter, you’ll have to make sure it has one thing.
“I’ve never driven anything that wasn’t a manual, so, for me, that’s a must. That makes the Mustang a really easy choice for me,” said Cindric, who learned how to shift gears as a kid when his dad, Team Penske president Tim Cindric, let him do so from the passenger seat. “I’d usually have to take the back roads to school to avoid traffic, so that made my morning drive a lot more enjoyable. Obviously, my career choice makes it pretty obvious on what kind of car I’m gonna want to drive around most days, but it’s nice to have the power and the grip when you need it.”
His senior year at Cannon School in Concord, NC, saw him take only three classes in the morning after a series of summer school classes got him ahead. That enabled Cindric to drive every afternoon to Brad Keselowski Racing, where he was running a full schedule in the truck series.
“I would go workout and do the rest of the deal, so for a while there I wasn’t really spending a whole lot of time in school,” said Cindric, who said he often left his car unlocked because he knew most of the students and teachers didn’t know how to operate a stick shift. “I was doing a lot of running around and when you’re driving 40 minutes south of your house, and then an hour and 10 minutes north from the school it makes having the right car to drive much more important.”
Cindric has been associated with Ford since 2015 when he drove for Multimatic at the age of 16. He’s gained a wealth of experience in a number of different racing disciplines thanks to time spent racing in Global Rally Cross, IMSA, and Pirelli World Challenge.
He provided a milestone victory for Ford at Canadian Tire Motorsports Park on July 11, 2015 when he took the lead with 30 minutes remaining and registered the first win for the Shelby GT350R-C. That made him the youngest winner in series history at 16 years, 10 months, nine days.
“My first car was a Ford Focus ST. I had that car for a year and I wanted it because it was a manual and those cars still had the stock transmission, so you had to heel-toe downshift, you had to look after the gears, you had to use the clutch on all of your upshifts, just like driving a street car,” recalled Cindric, who personalizes each vehicle he drives with a pair of black fuzzy dice he hangs from the rearview mirror. “So, I was very adamant on having a manual to drive around town because I wanted to practice heel-toe downshifting and wanted to practice all those things driving to school.”
That philosophy not only worked for Cindric then, but has continued to pay dividends because he’s earned the opportunity to drive nearly every Ford Performance Mustang racer that’s been produced in recent years. Besides the aforementioned Shelby GT350R-C, he’s competed in the FR500C, Boss 302R, GT4, and currently the NASCAR XFINITY Series Mustang.
“I feel like when you’re racing sports cars that’s why the people come to the race track,” said Cindric, who is currently in his third year racing in the NASCAR XFINITY Series and considered a championship contender. “They don’t necessarily come for the guys driving the cars, they come for the cars themselves and it’s because they have a passion for those cars.
“That’s what has really made me appreciate driving a Ford Mustang because I’ll see a guy at a gas station, a complete stranger, and he’ll just start talking to me and asking me about my car,” continued Cindric. “It’s just a catalyst for conversation or a catalyst for getting to know one another. It’s something to talk about, but it’s also something you can talk about and you’re passionate about.”
And you can’t fault him for that.