AUSTIN, Texas Austin Cindric led 106 laps during the first two NASCAR Cup Series races of the season, but had little to show for it.

Getting caught up in a crash during the closing laps of both races relegated the Team Penske driver to an eighth-place finish at Daytona Intl Speedway, while he was scored 28^th last week at Atlanta Motor Speedway after being involved in a crash with Kyle Larson and others.

Cindric said during a Wednesday media teleconference, that getting over disappointing results is made easier by NASCARs busy schedule that forces drivers and teams to turn the page quickly.

I think you just described racing. Its why I love having a 30-plus race schedule is because I can just absolutely go and dive head first into my prep work, Cindric explained. If Im gonna use Atlanta as the example, by the time our plane landed from a relatively short flight I was already done with all of my notes and my debriefs and had all of my thoughts documented for the team on the event.

By lunch time on Monday I had a call scheduled with Kyle (Larson) and by Tuesday Im completely over at least the work that needs to be done for it, so thats kind of how I process those things, but I think by the time I get to the racetrack its back to business and theres plenty of other things to focus on, but its easy to say all that, but, yeah, it certainly is frustrating.

Even when people say, Oh, youre still fourth in points. Its like, thats just as much of a kick in between the legs as it is losing all of those points we could have had, so its difficult, but thats just the sport that were in, Cindric added. Id rather have the big opportunities become missed opportunities than not have the opportunities at all, and my team has done an exceptional job. Ive been able to match that effort at these races, and I see no reason why we cant continue to do that.

While much attention has been made of the change to the shorter National Course at Circuit of The Americas this weekend, Cindric says a new Goodyear tire will have a bigger impact on Sundays Cup Series race at the Austin, Texas, road course.

The course, I would say, is largely unchanged from otherwise were just cutting a few corners out really simply, Cindric explained. I think the larger conversation for us, at least within my race team, is the introduction of yet another road course tire, which is supposed to be similar to what we raced at Watkins Glen in the playoffs, so I think theres probably more variables and more discussions based around that and more potential strategy and certain things throughout the race that will be affected by having tire wear or not having tire wear and depending on where it falls.

There have been repaved sections of the race track, but as far as the course itself, the shortcut through 6A and 6B, I think your restarts are already kind of single file by the time you get to the end of the esses, which is where 6A starts, so I dont see a ton changing other than were just gonna run more laps and I feel like that stadium section is gonna take a larger percentage of the lap and potentially be a more important part of the lap.

Cindric believes tire management will be important on Sunday.

I think the tire management, as I touched on earlier, will be the biggest variable going into the weekend as far as the last few years weve been there there hasnt been a large amount of tire fall off at race pace, so this tire that were bringing and I feel like is worth adding, hasnt to the best of my knowledge been on the race track before, so its kind of new to everyone, Cindric said. We have a couple sets of tires for practice to be able to feel that out, so I think that could play a large role in the strategy, but I think track position is always important at road courses, especially at COTA due to how you exit turn one really sets up for the lap because the field gets very single file after the esses, just the nature of essentially a slalom course for the cars, so its easy to get pretty spread out and lose touch of the top few cars quite quickly, so qualifying will be exceptionally important, and I think understanding what the tire is like will be exceptionally important.