Austin Cindric got his first taste of a supercar

The 2022 Daytona 500 winner will trade in his usual Ford Mustang for another, this time from the third generation of Australian Supercars. Just under two weeks before his racing debut in Adelaide, Austin Cindric was able to test the No. 5 Mustang for the first time, the car he will drive in the final race of the season.

Cindric was able to count on an exceptional teacher in his teammate Cam Waters, an eighteen-time winner in the discipline, who participated in a round of NASCAR Cup Series in 2024. After seeing how to drive one of the top-level racing cars in Australia, Austin Cindric was quite impressed!

“It was aggressive (when he went over the kerbs), but it didn’t affect the car in the slightest, and it was fun to see someone else take the wheel. I’ve never been one to criticize other people’s driving, but I just sat there watching his feet, what he was doing, what the dashboard was doing in the car, and all that. So I was very interested in what was going on the whole time.”

The time had then come for the 27-year-old driver to get behind the wheel and test a Supercar for the first time. By arriving in Australia two weeks before his end-of-season stint, Cindric will be able to more easily acclimatize to the time difference and his new working environment.

 

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"It's a much faster car.", he explained to V8Sleuth.com, in comparison to his NASCAR machine that he is used to driving. "It has more downforce, it's lighter, it has tires with more grip, so it does everything better. However, the car's limitations are quite similar to the NASCAR, mainly in terms of rear grip under braking. You can compare the two cars, but the NASCAR is much stiffer. I really had to push myself much harder to go over the kerbs."

It remains to be seen how Austin Cindric will fare in a field of specialists in Adelaide in less than two weeks. In a way, Cindric is following the opposite path of many Oceanian drivers, including Marcos Ambrose and Shane van Gisbergen, who have focused their careers on the USA full-time, or Brodie Kostecki and Cam Waters, who have made guest appearances in NASCAR.

ALSO READ > Austin Cindric to make Supercars debut in Adelaide