Before Shane van Gisbergen and Connor Zilisch arrived on the NASCAR scene and began to assert their superiority on road courses, AJ Allmendinger’s name invariably was the first one mentioned when handicapping circuits with right- and left-hand turns.
But Allmendinger hasn’t won a road course race since 2023, when he triumphed at Circuit of the Americas in the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series and won at the Charlotte Roval in the Cup Series.
“The way we change that narrative is you go beat them, right?” Allmendinger said. “But for the most part, we didn’t do that at most of the road courses last year. It’s not frustrating to me. For me, the most frustrating thing was just, in general, we didn’t run great at the road courses last year.
“I put a lot of that on my shoulders. I think as Goodyear softens the tire, it gives the advantage to a guy like SVG (Van Gisbergen) that really knows how to save the tires. It’s something that, whether it was setup-based or my own doing, I struggled with it last year of trying to be good on long runs.”
Allmendinger conceded his own performance has to improve if he plans to return to Victory Lane.
“I don’t really put stock in how good SVG is, in that sense. Like for me, it would be different if I ran second every weekend to him on the road courses and you can’t beat him, then that kind of gets frustrating.
“But we weren’t even in that ballpark, so I think it’s more focusing on myself. You try to learn from them; study it, try to figure out what makes them so good and try to go out there and be better. That’s kind of what I focus on. The only thing I get frustrated with is myself.”
On Saturday, however, Allmendinger qualified seventh for Sunday’s DuraMAX Grand Prix, and Van Gisbergen was 13th fastest.
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