Austin Cindric returning to rallycross, enters Nitro RX at Wild Horse Pass

This weekend’s Nitro Rallycross doubleheader at Wild Horse Pass Motorsports Park will feature double (or triple if you include Travis Pastrana‘s brief tenure) the NASCAR flavour. While Chase Elliott prepares for his second foray into rallycross, Austin Cindric will make his return to the discipline after last competing there as a teenager, competing against Pastrana and Elliott in Group E.

“Delaying the off-season another week,” Cindric tweeted. “Looking forward to knocking off the rust and getting back to my rallycross roots.”

Cindric débuted in the Global Rallycross Championship Lites class as a 15-year-old in 2014, where he finished fifth in points and won a bronze medal at the X Games. He pursued the 2015 championship and won four times but finished runner-up to team-mate Oliver Eriksson.

From 2016 onwards, he began focusing on stock cars. In 2017, while racing full-time in the NASCAR Truck Series, he returned to rallycross for the GRC Supercar round at Evergreen Speedway, finishing eighth—with some controversy for spinning NASCAR alumnus Scott Speed a week after doing the same to Kaz Grala for his lone career Truck win—and fourth in two races for Bryan Herta Rallysport. His most recent rallycross entry was the 2018 RallyX on Ice in Höljes, Sweden, where he finished thirteenth.

While he did not run another rallycross race since, he has become one of the hottest young stars in NASCAR. After dominating the Xfinity Series from 2019 to 2021, during which he won the 2020 championship, the Team Penske driver claimed 2022 Cup Series Rookie of the Year honours in a year that began with victory at the Daytona 500. He finished 2022 with a twelfth-place points finish, nine top tens, five top fives, the 500 win, and a pole.

Cindric is one of two drivers with an X Games medal and a Cup race victory alongside Robby Gordon, who won the Stadium Super Trucks bronze in 2014. The two along with Speed, Steve Arpin, Sheldon Creed, and Nelson Piquet Jr. are the only ones with medals and NASCAR victories in lower divisions. Creed, the 2014 SST silver and 2015 gold medalist and current Xfinity driver, and Cindric have NASCAR national championships to their names, both coming in 2020.

The Nitro Rallycross entry comes a week after the NASCAR season ended at nearby Phoenix Raceway. Cindric and Penske team-mate and 2022 Cup champion Joey Logano have driven the Group E FC1-X in the past. While Logano has yet to turn his test into an actual start, Cindric joins Elliott and Kyle Busch as high-profile NASCAR drivers who have raced in Nitro RX.

“From the rally cars I’ve driven before, there’s a lot more buttons, a lot more carbon fibre, a lot more screens,” said Cindric during the test. “It’s like a high powered all-wheel drive go-kart.”

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