Following his win at the Charlotte Motor Speedway road course, AJ Allmendinger discusses the non-stop mindset a NASCAR Cup Series driver must have in order to thrive.
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00:00 And AJ, for those final laps and knowing how this season has
00:05 been, the frustration that's gone on with it,
00:08 how were you keeping yourself mentally saying, OK,
00:11 you know, I've got Ty looking for his first win,
00:13 William there behind you, Kyle trying to get to the playoffs
00:17 as well?
00:18 How do you keep yourself pumped up and knowing that, hey,
00:22 I can win this?
00:24 Yeah, I mean, I try to study a lot of not
00:28 just the racetrack and things like that,
00:31 but knowing where everybody's at in the playoffs
00:34 and what they're racing for.
00:35 Because you're still going for a cup
00:37 win, everybody's going to be aggressive.
00:39 But there's a different aggressive level,
00:41 and there's desperation, and there's things like that.
00:44 I've loved racing against Ty over the last, what,
00:48 four years now, 2020, or whenever he started
00:51 in the Xfinity series.
00:52 I feel like me and him get along great.
00:57 Us going back and forth was a lot of fun.
01:01 But with that said, you know what he's racing for.
01:03 It's a first cup win.
01:04 I mean, it's hard to do this.
01:05 It's freaking hard.
01:07 And I know there's certain teams and certain drivers
01:11 that get a lot of opportunities to go win cup races,
01:13 but there's also a lot of drivers and teams that don't.
01:16 So I knew Ty--
01:18 I thought we raced fairly clean for knowing
01:20 what we were battling for.
01:22 I knew Kyle had to win to make the playoffs.
01:24 I kept looking up at the board to see where he was at,
01:27 points-wise.
01:28 Obviously, I knew William was probably
01:30 going to the next round.
01:31 He's going to be aggressive, but maybe not desperate aggressive.
01:35 So that was kind of what was playing in my head on who
01:38 I was racing around.
01:40 At the end of the day, for me, it's
01:45 about if I give everything I have, I make no mistakes,
01:49 and William gets around me and beats me, yeah, it sucks.
01:52 But I go home and I look in the mirror, and you say,
01:55 yep, better team, better driver beat me that day.
01:58 The one thing I did not want to do
02:00 was be that guy that made a mistake and let him by me.
02:02 And that's something that--
02:04 this is what we all want, to be put in those pressure cooker
02:08 moments.
02:10 And if-- these guys know.
02:12 I struggle to believe in myself every day.
02:14 It's a dark-- it's an ugly place sometimes.
02:18 I always say I have the best life possible,
02:20 and that's why I'm miserable every day.
02:22 Because it's wake up, what the hell
02:23 are you going to do to be better today?
02:25 And it's-- god, it's ugly sometimes.
02:28 But it's the way I am.
02:29 I won't ever change.
02:31 And those are the moments that I dream of,
02:34 of knowing, hey, you got the best of the best
02:37 in the world behind you.
02:39 It's on you to not let them by.
02:41 And I felt like I made a couple of real small mistakes
02:45 with the 24 behind me.
02:46 The rear tires were starting to go.
02:48 But those last seven, eight laps,
02:49 that's as perfect as I can drive a race car.
02:51 And that's win or lose, but especially win,
02:55 that's the stuff that you walk in,
02:57 you walk around with your chest out just that little bit.
03:00 Because it's very rare that I do that.
03:01 But just walk around a little bit,
03:04 knowing when it's time, I can be as perfect as possible.