How opportunity awaits AJ Allmendinger, one of NASCAR’s best road racers, at Circuit of the Americas

With just two races down and accounted for, there remains a wide range of possibilities as to how the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season can go for drivers throughout the field. Possibilities that, this weekend, are especially wide for a driver like AJ Allmendinger.

Over the past several years, the expansion of NASCAR’s annual slate of road course races have helped turn Allmendinger — who cut his teeth racing such circuits in the open wheel ranks before switching to stock cars — into a habitual race winner and championship contender. Since joining Kaulig Racing in 2019, Allmendinger has gone from two career wins in the Xfinity Series to 18, and he has also made the series’ Championship 4 two different times. And at the Cup level, Allmendinger went from winning just once in his first stint as a full-time Cup driver from 2007 to 2018 to winning twice since his return to NASCAR’s top level in 2021.

This year, Allmendinger’s back-and-forth between full-time Cup and full-time Xfinity has landed him back in the seat of Kaulig’s No. 16 Cup car, where the ultimate goal is to try and turn Kaulig into a championship-caliber Cup program like it’s become in Xfinity competition. Speaking to CBS Sports in Daytona, Allmendinger recognized that a championship is indeed the goal — though with an important caveat.

“We’ve got to be realistic on where we are. And a lot of that is based on the first eight to 10 races go,” Allmendinger told CBS Sports. “I always feel like you get kind of a general idea, you’ve been to all types of racetracks at that point. You kind of see what the strengths and weaknesses are.”

On the surface, the strength of Allmendinger’s race team is its road course program, which would make this weekend a very important one. Circuit of the Americas marks the first road course race of the season, and one that comes uncommonly early as just the third race on the schedule — meaning that should Allmendinger take the checkered flag, it would put him in the NASCAR playoffs and theoretically make his entire season within the first five races.

A victory for Allmendinger is perfectly possible, considering he’s won COTA twice in the Xfinity Series and was leading on the final lap of the track’s Cup race in 2022. The problem is, the gap between NASCAR’s best road racers and the rest of the field has become significantly smaller as the discipline has become a larger part of the sport — and considering the way the schedule lays out, it isn’t as if this weekend marks Allmendinger’s only opportunity to contend.

“It’s easy to look at COTA and just think, ‘OK, that’s our chance to win.’ We know if we execute, we can run top five at those races. But it’s not that simple anymore,” Allmendinger said. “You look at how many road courses we have, you look at the effort that every team and driver puts into the road courses, and it’s not easy to go run top 10 at these races

“I know the road courses are a better opportunity, but it’s not easy and you just try not to make that big of a deal out of it. If you look at the start of the season, between Daytona and Atlanta that are wild cards, COTA’s a good racetrack, Phoenix is a racetrack that we’ve probably struggled at, Vegas is a racetrack that we’ve been okay at and Homestead is a racetrack that we’ve been pretty good at.

“So the season early on lays out to where we can be pretty good. But you’ve just got to take it race by race. And I know that’s kind of clicheish, but you just have to focus on that racetrack that weekend and go from there.”

In general, there is a big emphasis for Kaulig on improving in general in 2025. The 2024 season was a frustrating one for Kaulig’s Cup team, prompting a number of changes that have led to a different dynamic at their Welcome, N.C. shop. Allmendinger told CBS Sports the level of effort Kaulig has put into its Cup program this season is “probably” the most it’s ever applied, and the preparation of its cars is the most ahead of schedule it’s ever been.

A large part of that is the team’s hire of new technical director Mike Cook, who for the first time gives Kaulig’s Cup team a technical director who does not also serve as one of their crew chiefs.

“We’ve never had a technical director that’s not been a crew chief on the car,” Allmendinger said. “Somebody like (former crew chief) Matt Swiderski, Squid, he did a great job at it, but it’s hard to do, right?

“So just having somebody that’s focused on the technical side of it that doesn’t have to worry about crew chiefing, that’s a huge deal for us. I think so far, so good. I try not to overreact … I just wholeheartedly believe that the effort that’s been put into it, we can generally be a lot better.”

Through the first two races, that effort has led to some mixed results for Allmendinger specifically. He was fast in his Duel qualifying race at Daytona and had a chance to push teammate Ty Dillon to the win on the final lap, but only made 42 laps in the Daytona 500 before suffering an engine failure. He bounced back somewhat in Atlanta, showing good single-car speed with a 12th-place qualifying effort before finishing 14th.

“I do believe that if we do everything right and we have the speed that we think we can have, we can have an opportunity to make the playoffs whether that’s winning or making it in on points. But it’s a long ways to go before you really worry about that,” Allmendinger said. “I think for me, at the end of the day, it’s just trying to be good enough that I keep improving our race team and that (car owner Matt Kaulig) and (team president Chris Rice) think that I’m helping.”

Allmendinger’s return to full-time Cup racing has been greatly aided by increased sponsorship support, including from longtime partner Celsius, which has now introduced new hydration products — giving Allmendinger more options when it comes to his preparation for and recovery from each race, including this weekend at COTA where he’ll once again pilot the Celisus Chevrolet.

“Hydration isn’t something that all of a sudden Thursday or Friday night you go, ‘I’m gonna start hydrating and I’ll be good for the weekend.’ You’ve got to really focus on that during the week,” Allmendinger said. “So what Celsius is doing now with that side of it is very big. Because for somebody like myself, that’s something that I start Monday after a race.

“It’s almost twofold, right? Monday you’re trying to rehydrate from racing Sunday afternoon, but you’re already focusing on Friday, Saturday, Sunday for the next week because that’s what you have to do because you can’t let your body get run down. To be able to grow now and look at Celsius Hydration, to look at the essential side of it, the energy side of it, they’re just kind of becoming all around.”