How Penske's rookie sensation opened NASCAR's new era in style

After holding his nerve and hip-checking his teammate on the run to the line, Austin Cindric made a perfect start to life as a full-timer in the NASCAR Cup Series by winning the Daytona 500. Here's how the Penske Ford man emerged first across the line in the first points-scoring race for the much-anticipated Next Generation cars

Updated Feb 21, 2022, 4:40 PM

The 64th running of the Daytona 500 took three-and-a-half hours to complete but came down, as it so often does, to the final seconds. Austin Cindric – on his team boss Roger Penske's 85th birthday – elbowed his teammate Ryan Blaney into the wall and then fended off Toyota's Bubba Wallace by 0.036s for a remarkable victory.

On the debut of the Next Gen car in NASCAR's Cup Series, and in front of a packed house of over 120,000 fans, it was 'next-gen driver' Cindric – running full-time in the series as a rookie for one of America's finest teams – who galloped with the hounds all day to become the second-youngest driver to win America's Great Race at the age of 23.

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Author Charles Bradley

Charles Bradley is Motorsport.com’s Global Editor in Chief. After spending five years in the aerospace industry in his native North Wales, while working weekends as a freelance writer at racetracks around the UK, Charles joined the staff of Motoring News in the heart of London. He transferred to the nascent Autosport.com team in 2000 before transitioning to the magazine, becoming its Editor between 2011 and 2014. Charles then upped sticks to work in America, as Motorsport.com’s Editor in Chief, where he created the multi-national and multi-lingual editorial team that quickly became the world’s most-read motorsport website. He was instrumental in delivering three of the biggest Global F1 Fan Surveys in sports history and is also a multiple award-winning scriptwriter. Charles is an overseas member of the Guild of Motoring Writers and lives in Miami Beach with his wife Helen – and a cat that’s named after Serbia’s top football club.