Top-five run at Charlotte not enough for Austin Cindric to advance in NASCAR playoffs

Austin Cindric drove a quiet, clean race on Sunday at the Charlotte Roval, but his fourth-place finish didn't culminate in a Round of 8 berth.

Crashes at both Kansas and Talladega — the latter of which came with Cindric leading inside of five laps to go — put Cindric 29 points below the cut line going into Sunday's race in Charlotte.

A win was likely Cindric's only path to the penultimate round of the playoffs, and despite scoring six stage points, that was the case in Stage Three.

With Kyle Larson, Christopher Bell and William Byron all presenting formidable challenges, Cindric was stuck in fourth for a majority of the race's final stage, ultimately finishing fourth on a day where his best simply wasn't enough.

Cindric's 39 points were the sixth-most scored by a driver on Sunday, but the aforementioned incidents in the first two races of the round sealed the fate of the 2022 Daytona 500 champion.

Interestingly, Sunday was the second time the Roval ended Cindric's postseason journey, as he was also eliminated in the Round of 12 in his rookie season of 2022.

"It's disappointing because I feel like we had speed in all three races to be able to make it," Cindric said regarding his elimination. "Even with the mistake I made at Kansas, if we don't get wrecked at the end of Talladega, I feel like we advance after today. That's racing, right? You wish you could go back and have a better regular season, too, but I've always said that in the playoffs, you learn the most about yourself and your competition. I feel like we proved at lot to ourselves as the team of the No. 2 car."

2024 marked the second time in his three Cup Series seasons that Cindric made the playoffs and advanced to the Round of 12. It also saw him snag the second victory of his Cup Series career in St. Louis on June 2.