Aric Almirola has his sights set on improving his spot in the NASAR Cup Series Playoffs standings in Saturday night’s Federated Auto Parts 400 at Richmond Raceway (7:30 p.m. ET on NBCSN/NBC Sports App, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
Almirola enters the second race of the opening round 11th on the playoff grid just three points above the elimination line. He kicked off the NASCAR Playoffs with a 16th-place finish in the Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway, a race that was a rough-and-tumble affair for a number of playoff hopefuls. Almirola isn’t exactly certain why things were so tumultuous.
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“I honestly can’t explain the amount of attrition between the playoff drivers, but it does seem to happen when we get to the playoffs,” Almirola said. “We see it time and time again where playoff drivers end up with bad races and find themselves in a hole. I guess it’s just the way it works and it creates a lot of excitement for TV and the sport in general seeing guys trying to dig out of holes to make it to the next round of the playoffs.”
Part of the equation is simply because the stakes are so high at this juncture of the season. Almirola understands the struggle all playoff drivers go through in order to both stay alive and hopefully advance in the postseason.
“It’s such a balancing act between not making mistakes and don’t wreck, don’t take yourself out, but at the same time you’ve got to race for every point,” he said. “Every single stage point matters. Every single point in position on the race track at the end of the race matters, so it really is a tough challenge and a balancing act between being aggressive to go get the spots that you need to go get and making sure that you don’t put yourself in a bad position to get tore up and have a DNF.”
Almirola thinks he can replicate his spring Richmond run during Saturday night’s return to the .75-mile track. He came home sixth in April and is confident a similar performance is possible.
However, Almirola doesn’t see any of last week’s intensity level at Darlington dissipating.
“More of the same,” he said. “It’s gonna be tough. It’s gonna be intense. There’s gonna be a lot of battling and I have no doubt that you will see a playoff car or a couple or a few run into some trouble. It just happens and you just don’t want to be that guy.
“We’ve been fortunate going to Richmond in year’s past, especially in the playoffs where we’ve always had good cars. We’ve run in the top five, scored a lot of stage points and had good finishes, so that’s been one of our best race tracks and we’re taking the same car we won at Loudon with, so hopefully we can produce a similar result.”
