Speedway, Ind. – Reigning NASCAR Cup Series winner at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course AJ Allmendinger had a shot to win again on Sunday (July 31). Instead, the chaotic finish, coupled with his cooling shirt failing to work, left him with a trip to the infield care center and a seventh-place finish.
“It was hot from the start of the race. The problem was by the time we figured it out, I still had the cooling shirt on. It just made it even hotter in the car. I was doing OK. With 20 to go, I ran out of water. The helmet blower started to feel hot as well. Just riding around under yellow makes it worse. During green I could be OK. When you get heat soaked into the car under yellow, those last few laps were pretty brutal.”
There were two caution flag periods with less than 10 laps to go in the Verizon 200. Upon climbing out of the car, Allmendinger collapsed.
Ever the competitor, Allmendinger still was grateful to have a shot at the victory. He restarted second on the final restart, though he knew craziness was coming.
“Once you get green you suck it up and we had a shot to win the race and that’s all that mattered,” he said. “The way turn one is here, if you’re on the outside front [row] on one of those late race restarts you’re just going to get run into. We saw it with Chase [Briscoe] the start before and we saw it with Chase Briscoe last year. You just get shoved off the race track. I figured I was going to get shoved off the race track into [turn] 1 and make the best of it and felt like we did. At the end of the day we gave ourselves a shot to win two in a row and that’s pretty badass.”
On Saturday, Allmendinger won the NASCAR Xfinity Series event at the Indy road course, so he sought back-to-back Cup wins there and back-to-back wins this race weekend. Allmendinger didn’t suffer from dehydration nor other issues in the Xfinity post-race as he joyously celebrated.
Allmendinger left the Brickyard feeling better both physically and mentally too.
UPDATE pic.twitter.com/Tl5q0xSWK4
— Tara Allmendinger (@_TaraLea) July 31, 2022
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