Austin Cindric will perform Double Duty for the second time in 2021 as the NASCAR Cup and Xfinity Series head to Atlanta Motor Speedway. On Monday, Team Penske announced their Xfinity driver will run his second career Cup race in the #33 Ford Mustang on Sunday.
The news was revealed via a TikTok video of Cindric walking through team headquarters before his clothes switch to his Cup firesuit.
The news comes on the heels of Cindric scoring his second Xfinity victory of the season at Phoenix on Saturday. The reigning champion and current points leader is the only driver with top-five finishes in all five races to date.
Cindric made his Cup début in February’s Daytona 500, driving the #33 a day after winning the Xfinity season opener. He hung out in the top ten for much of the later stages before being collected in a fiery last-lap wreck with his Penske team-mates. He will run additional races in the #33 throughout the 2021 season before becoming a full-time Cup driver in 2022 for Wood Brothers Racing.
Sunday’s Atlanta race will technically not be Cindric’s first time turning laps at the 1.5-mile track in a Cup car. In 2019, he filled in for Penske driver Brad Keselowski in final practice while Keselowski was battling the flu; Cindric was the twenty-eighth-fastest driver in the session before Keselowski returned and eventually won the race. Later in the year, he took over Daytona 500 winner Michael McDowell‘s Front Row Motorsports car for Charlotte Roval practice after McDowell was hospitalised for a kidney stone. He was twenty-fourth in the session.
PIRTEK USA will provide sponsorship; the Australian-born industrial hose supplier has maintained close relations with Penske in both the United States and Australia, the latter of which included sponsoring Penske’s Supercars Championship team (now exclusively operated by Dick Johnson Racing). In America, PIRTEK has sponsored Cindric since his Camping World Truck Series days with now-defunct Penske ally Brad Keselowski Racing. The company first sponsored Cup cars with Keselowski in 2020.
PIRTEK USA posted on Twitter in response to the video, “That PIRTEK USA suit looks great on you, Austin! Congratulations to you and @Team_Penske on your win at @phoenixraceway over the weekend! We can’t wait to see you in the PIRTEK blue and yellow No. 33 PIRTEK Ford Mustang this Sunday!”
