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Aric Almirola did not expect such a bad start to the season and is dissatisfied with the way he drove. Yet 6th place in Richmond could evoke slight optimism in the team “I don’t know about you, but I’ve never started a project or anything else that I’ve expected it to go miserably wrong, and that’s exactly what has happened with our season,” Almirola, 37, said, as quoted by motorsport “I don’t think anybody on our team or any of our partners or anybody would have expected us to go through the beginning part of the season that we’ve gone through, so that was definitely something that’s caught us all off guard.
“It’s been a really rough stretch, but I’m proud of the way that we’ve continued to fight and we’ve continued to dig deep and really try and persevere, and Richmond was a nice way for us to bounce back”.
Risking
Almirola is aware that he will now have to take risks and try to make up for lost time, but this will not be an easy task given the backlog. “I think pointing our way in from here is a long shot for sure, especially just because we haven’t scored a lot of stage points anyway and our cars have been off, so a good day for us is similar to what we ran at Richmond,” he said.
“We flirt with the top 10, you score a few stage points and get a top 10 finish. “That’s what we’ve been capable of lately, so I know the guys at the shop are working hard to get our cars back to where they need to be to go compete for wins every week." "We’re going to need to win, and Talladega is a great opportunity for us to do that, but we can’t do that if we’re on a wrecker, so I think it is important for us to be mindful of that, making sure that we get to the finish so that we have a shot to win the race.
“I personally think that winning at Talladega is more important than scoring 20 stage points and two playoff points from winning both stages, but ending up in a big wreck”. His team is optimistic about Talladega given the good results in the past “We’ve had really good speedway cars.
We obviously won down at Daytona in the Duel, so our cars are fast. We know we can go there (and) we’ll have the capability of winning,” Almirola said. “You’ve just got to have some luck on your side and have things go your way and hopefully you don’t end up crashed”.