"That is pretty badass" - AJ Allmendinger on his performance at the Verizon 200 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway

AJ Allmendinger and his #16 Chevrolet Camaro for Kauling Racing had a good day at work at Indianapolis Motor Speedway last Sunday. He had a double-duty weekend competing in Saturday’s Pennzoil 150 at the Brickyard, where he dominated the race by leading 42 of 62 laps before finally clinching his third Xfinity win.

After a solid day at Pennzoil 150, Allmendinger's next assignment was to defend his Cup Series race win at the Verizon 200 on Sunday night. However, things didn’t pan out as expected as he lost the win to Tyler Reddick and ended up securing a seventh-place finish, marking his fourth top-ten finish of the season.

The 40-year-old driver had Victory Lane in his sights, but the excess heat in the last laps did not aid his cause. This led to a drop from second to seventh place after he got into contact with Ryan Blaney while entering Turn 1.

Speaking to the media about the restarts and extreme heat in the car, the #16 driver stated that it was "pretty badass" since he gave it a shot to carry two wins in a row. He said:

“Once you get green, you suck it up and we had a shot to win the race – so that is all that mattered. The way turn one is here – when you are on the outside front row on one of those late race restarts, you are just going to get run into. We saw it with Chase (Elliott) on the restart before and we saw it with Chase Briscoe last year.”

He added:

“You just get shoved off the racetrack so I figured I was going to get shoved off the racetrack into (turn) one. I tried to make the best of it and felt like we did. But at the end of the day, we gave ourselves a shot to win two in a row and that is pretty badass”

AJ Allmendinger was among the top drivers to carry the day after working all day, coming from P20 to lead three laps before the race ended. AJ Allmendinger seemed to be having a solid day until things started to get hot inside his #16 Camaro ZL1 following cooling suit failure.

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How AJ Allmendinger performed at the Verizon 200 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway

AJ Allmendinger said he was doing great until there were 20 laps remaining, his water ran out, and he started struggling with the heat. The situation worsened when his cooling suit failed, and after a few laps of struggling with cooling issues, he came out of the car and almost collapsed.

After climbing out of his car, AJ Allmendinger leaned on the wall with his knees on the ground. The safety team arrived on time with a stretcher, but he was strong enough to walk to the care center, where he underwent numerous check-ups before being released after 30 minutes.

Despite a hot day in the office, he still scored an outstanding finish. Getting two top-ten finishes in one weekend isn’t an easy task. He remains winless in the Cup Series but has claimed three wins in the Xfinity Series, which means he’s fully locked into the Xfinity playoffs.