When he celebrated being the 2022 NASCAR Cup Series Rookie of the Year at last December's year-end awards night, Austin Cindric wore a special belt buckle to the occasion. It was a momento to a man that he never knew, but who he has much in common with.
The belt buckle -- featuring an open-wheel race car and the slogan "Sleep Cheap!" -- once belonged to Cindric's grandfather Jim Trueman, the founder of Red Roof Inn and a successful racer in his own right. Trueman won championships as a driver in SCCA, used his business riches to become the owner of Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, and then became the owner of the Truesports team that would win the 1986 Indianapolis 500 with Bobby Rahal at the wheel of Trueman's March 86C.
Winning the Indy 500 would be Trueman's crowning achievement in racing -- and one of the last things he ever did. Trueman was already gravely ill with colon cancer by the time Rahal took the checkered flag, and he died 11 days later at the age of 51. But in victory, he would leave something that would give his future grandson a concrete idea of who he was, and how long winning one of the greatest races in the world could last, when he one day sat and watched a DVD set chronicling the Indy 500 through the decades.
"in the 1980s, they talk about Jim Trueman and talked about how he won the Indy 500 a couple days before he died from cancer, and everyone knew it was coming," Cindric told CBS Sports. "The race had been rained out, and the race was supposed to be on his birthday, so the car said 'Happy Birthday JRT'
"I never really knew all these things. I guess I hadn't asked, but I had never really been told. I feel like that made that a lot more real. I'd been to the Indy 500 many times, I'd felt the passion for racing. To kind of learn about his impact and afterwards from developing that was pretty special. So I certainly started to ask a lot more questions and find more stuff at my grandma's house and kind of understand that side of my family a lot more."
Through that Indianapolis 500 win, Cindric found understanding and familiarity with his grandfather. And through his own racing career, he achieved something that now puts him in the very same league his grandfather eternally occupies. Last year, Austin Cindric stunned the racing world by winning the Daytona 500 as a rookie, finding the front in the last 50 laps and outlasting several veteran drivers to score his first Cup win in just his eighth start.
The significance of the victory was far from lost on Cindric -- as the son of Team Penske president Tim Cindric, he grew up with a first-hand perspective of winning on racing's greatest stages. And he knew too that even if he hadn't followed up his 500 win with anything else -- much less a 12th-place finish in the championship standings and one of the better Cup rookie campaigns in recent memory -- his maiden season as a driver at NASCAR's top level was already regarded as a success.
"If my career stops right now, yeah, that would be what I'd be known for. I think throughout the sports world, people who don't know me – at a bare minimum, some people only know me for winning the Daytona 500. And I am quite okay with that," Cindric said. "It's something that happens one day a year, and the Daytona 500 happens and everyone knows that it happens. Whether you're a sports fan, a racing fan, or just somebody. You know the Daytona 500's happening, you know what it is. It's a household name.
"... Everyone knows (the Daytona 500), everyone knows the Indy 500, everyone knows Le Mans, those races. To be able to be part of a moment like that, obviously – not just winning, but being part of that moment is, I think, pretty wild. Hard to imagine. And then certainly even more hard to imagine winning the event."
In winning the Daytona 500 as a rookie, Cindric has already accomplished something that some of NASCAR's best are still trying to -- Kyle Busch, Brad Keselowski and Martin Truex Jr. are among the notable veterans to have never won The Great American Race. In the grand scheme of a career with still much to come, having the distinction of being a Daytona 500 champion already out of the way can be very liberating.
But that kind of career-defining triumph can also present another chain, for the freedom of having already won a Daytona 500 can also obscure what achievements are still out there.
"It's weird because you try and think to yourself, 'Okay, what's next?' It's like, 'Well, I'd be perfectly satisfied with just doing the same thing again.' Which is kind of a strange place to find yourself in your career," Cindric said. "Because as a young driver you're always trying to get to the next level, find the next thing, find the next height. And past the Daytona 500 and a couple other marquee events, the next height is the championship.
"And that takes, for some, years. Or (for) some it never happens. But that's certainly my goal, and I certainly work in an environment that that's the expectation, or at least the goal."
The expectation in Team Penske's environment is set by Joey Logano, who ended the 2022 season by winning his second Cup championship and the third in team history. Given that and Cindric's own experiences as champion of the Xfinity Series in 2020 -- and inches away from a second in 2021 -- helps him recognize what the next thing to strive for is, while also giving him the assurance that he already has the tools necessary to reach that point.
"Being able to utilize them and figure out how I can make that happen, how I can find that next level, is really I think what makes the Daytona 500 win something that pushes that forward or makes that more obvious for me as my next step, my next goal," Cindric said. "But probably one of the hardest to achieve."
Compared to other young drivers in NASCAR, Austin Cindric's background is a unique one, and it informs his exact motivations in and beyond his current discipline. Before turning his attention to stock car racing, he came up the racing ladder through the Road to Indy, through sports cars, and through Global RallyCross. While he's currently looking to become a consistent frontrunner in NASCAR and eventually a Cup champion, the siren call of other conquests -- including the Indianapolis 500, the same race his grandfather won as a car owner -- still sound for him.
For now, the opportunity to become the 13th driver in history to win the Daytona 500 more than once is what Cindric has immediately available to pursue. And should he end up becoming just that, it would go a long way toward the 24-year-old's endgame beyond glory in one of the races renowned the world over.
"I want to do it all, man. It's pretty simple – I want to be the best, I want to experience the best," Cindric said. "And it's those big events that are obviously marked on the schedule and certainly bucket list items or wins. I love this sport, I love driving, I want to do it all."
