| NASCAR CUP SERIES SONOMA RACEWAY TEAM CHEVY DRIVER QUOTES JUNE 27, 2026 |
AJ Allmendinger, driver of the No. 16 Kaulig Racing Chevrolet, met with the media in advance of making his milestone 500th career NASCAR Cup Series start at Sonoma Raceway this weekend. | MEDIA RESOURCES: Photo Gallery | Race AdvancesChevrolet Newsroom |
| NASCAR CUP SERIESSONOMA RACEWAYTEAM CHEVY DRIVER QUOTESJUNE 27, 2026 |
AJ Allmendinger, driver of the No. 16 Kaulig Racing Chevrolet, met with the media in advance of making his milestone 500th career NASCAR Cup Series start at Sonoma Raceway this weekend. | MEDIA RESOURCES: Photo Gallery | Race AdvancesChevrolet Newsroom |
Media Availability Quotes: AJ Allmendinger will make his 500th start in the NASCAR Cup Series tomorrow afternoon, and will be the 48th driver in series history to accomplish this incredible feat. What are you looking forward to this weekend at Sonoma Raceway?“Yeah, I mean this place is always special. It’s basically my home race. I always get to see a lot of family and friends that I don’t get to see enough of, for sure. I think when it comes to results on this track, I haven’t had the best results, but I do enjoy racing and just running laps around Sonoma. I feel like kind of where we’re at as a race team right now, having the outright speed to win the race, I’m not sure we are there right now. But I feel like if we execute and we’re at our best, we can put ourselves in position to have a really good result. And then, you never know what could happen. Just being close enough to the front is important, for sure. It’s tough here. I think the last couple of years has been interesting because obviously they repaved it two years ago and it had a massive amount of grip and tire wear wasn’t an issue. And then last year, it felt like, I wouldn’t say that it went completely back to the old Sonoma, but it was kind of slick again. But then watching O’Reilly practice yesterday, it looked like the tires weren’t falling off a lot. So, I’m not sure what to expect on that front. But yeah, I mean it’s a technical race track. It’s easy to burn off the rear tires at times around here, and for us, I think that’s kind of our focus of just trying to have a good balance when we unload here. If we do that, it makes the weekend a whole lot easier, for sure.” Last year, you said you can learn from Shane (van Gisbergen), but you can’t let it torment you. At what point do you stop studying the guy that everyone is chasing and trust in your own game?“Well, I mean, that’s actually a really good question. There’s a happy mix, for sure. You know, you still learn from what makes him so good. But with that said, it’s like you go out there and you try to drive exactly like him and it makes some of the things I think I’m strong at weak trying to do that. So, it’s just a balance, I think more than anything. He’s so smooth in the way he takes care of the rear tires. It’s pretty impressive because if you watch his in-car stuff, I mean, it looks slow. If you don’t put a stopwatch on it, you’re like, it’s not very fast, but obviously it is. I’m always trying to learn. But yeah, I think at some point when it comes to us at Kaulig Racing, we know what our cars are and where we need to make them better, and we’re not probably at that point right now, so you try to make the best of that. And then for me, it’s trying to execute, just minimize any mistakes that I make and still focusing on what’s going to make the car good in a short run and the long run. So, yeah, there’s always a little bit of mix in there. I still study it though.” We have the different kind of racing now where there’s no longer ‘win and you’re in’. How does the points here try to match up? Does your strategy change to try to get more points in certain stages here?“Well, I mean, for us this year, I think that’s something that we focused on. You kind of see as you go through practice and qualifying, and then even a little bit during the first stage of what you have as a race car. I think if you really think you can win the race, you got to run the stages like you have in the past of short-pitting them and making sure you keep track position. There have been races this year where we’ve run the stages out knowing like, ‘hey, you know, we probably don’t have the speed to win the race, so points are important.’ At this place, I think it’s hit or miss. Sometimes you can kind of come through middle of the field and make some passes and make it work and get to the front, but it’s also not the easiest place to pass either. So, yeah, it’s about having that right mix. It comes down to really seeing what we are through practice and qualifying today; judge what kind of speed we have and then see how it’s going through the first stage. I still think ultimately to win the race or to run in the top-three, you’re going to have to short-pit the second stage. So, yeah, I guess we determine what we are at that point of what’s more important. That is one thing we’ve done well this year is that we’ve done a really good job at these races of getting kind of the max amount of points that we can get for what we have that weekend.” With the In-Season Challenge starting here at Sonoma, how does that affect your racing style? “Yeah, I mean honestly, I don’t think about it at all. Sure, if there’s four or five laps to go — this weekend, we’re racing against (Chase) Briscoe, so if you’re racing around him, I think it enters your mind a little bit. But when it comes to thinking about the race and how you go about it, that’s probably the last thing on my mind, for sure.” What has been your most memorable victory lane moment in your career so far? Coming into this weekend at Sonoma, how special would that mean to you to win on your 500th start?“Yeah, I mean, it’s funny. I didn’t even think about the 500th start until our race team started posting about it. You know, I think there’s two ways to think about it and it’s the way I am mentally about myself. You think 500 starts, immediately my mind goes, ‘well, damn, I wish I had won more.’ Yeah, I wish in these 500 starts, there’d be more ups. But if you’d ask 2007 A.J. as I was missing most of the races on a brand new race team like, ‘hey, by the way, 19 years later, you’re going to be at start 500 at Sonoma’, I would have been like there’s not a chance in hell. I’m literally just trying to get to the next one. I guess it’s good and bad because it’s what pushes me. But, you know, I spent so many years early on just trying to make one fast lap in practice, make the race, show some sort of speed or put together just one good race. But people still wanted me to drive their racecars, and I guess it’s probably, unfortunately and fortunately, the way my mentality is still of I’m always out there trying to prove it to myself that I still belong here. It’s what drives me insane sometimes. It’s also what pushes me to want to be at my best every second of the day, to prove it to myself. Matt (Kaulig), Chris (Rice) and Trent (Owens), everybody on this race team is always like you got nothing to prove. You’ve done everything. And I’m like, no, I still have to wake up tomorrow and prove it to myself. To be able to do it here (at Sonoma Raceway) especially, is pretty amazing. It would be one hell of a victory lane. There would be a lot of wine, mixed with Celsius, mixed with some other stuff probably. You might have to carry me out of victory lane, so hopefully that happens.” On the note of the 500th start, you’re not going to be too reflective about it because like you said, you’re still pushing yourself all the time. But just from a longevity standpoint, you see Casey Mears want to come back and get to a milestone number and stuff like that. It’s hard to last that long in the Cup Series. Do you give yourself any credit for the way that you’ve been able to endure all these years?“I give myself credit that I’ve tricked a lot of owners to keep me in their racecars still (laughs). I’ll be honest, the fact that I’m the 48th person, I just thought there were more people that have done it, so I didn’t think much of it. That kind of shocked me that I’m the 48th driver to reach that milestone. I think it’s something I’ll look back when I’m done and, you know, kind of go through the fun times. Getting to have Aero (son) at a lot of these races now and how just super excited he is. He just loves it. I’m going to have to do more because racing is not cheap. I keep trying to get a golf club in his hands and he just keeps screaming at me about race cars, so I think I’m going to be here for a little bit longer. But yeah, for me, I just always want to be better. So I think maybe at the end of it, I’ll look back and be like, ‘hey, that’s pretty amazing that I’ve gotten to do so many of them’. But right now, I just want to be better.” What about the Northern California racing scene? It worked for you growing up, so why has Northern California always kind of been in a driver development hotbed with yourself, Kyle Larson and Tyler Reddick?“Yeah, they’ve had a lot of incredible racecar drivers come out of this area. I think a lot of it is on the dirt track side of it. There’s so many dirt tracks around here. My dad raced local dirt tracks, and if we weren’t at one of his races, we were at Baylands. We were at Ascot. We were at San Jose. There were so many dirt tracks that you could just go and race at or watch. I think there are a lot of places to develop talent out here, especially on the sprint car side of it. But even in my region of karting, like the names that came out of the guys that I raced against and how many of them made it in true top-level echelon motorsports, it just shows that racing’s always been strong out here. I think it’s continually stayed strong, whether it’s sprint car racing, karting, late models, whatever it may be. For me, it’s nice to be a part of that group that I’ve gotten to share in that and still be doing it here.” You have a new sponsor on board this weekend and a scheme that’s going to be pretty hard to miss around here. What would it be like to park that EchoPark green and victory lane and just talk about a little bit about that sponsorship?“Well, I like any time we get a sponsor that has green in it because that’s always been my favorite color growing up. I still remember my parents taking me out here and me getting a picture next to Harry Gant’s car because that was my favorite paint scheme, that skull bandit green. So yeah, I always like a green racecar. I always got the ‘green is bad luck in racing’, and I was like, ‘it’s the same color as money…why is that bad luck?’ Obviously, it’s not a new sponsor to NASCAR. EchoPark Automotive does a lot with this sport. But for them to put their belief in myself and Kaulig Racing, that always means a lot to me. Hopefully, we can go out there and run up front; have a shot to win the race and pull that thing into victory lane. But yeah, you’re not going to miss it. It definitely stands out, which I really like.” On his relationship with Matt Kaulig and Chris Rice: “This is why I went from doing TV, thinking I was retiring and doing a couple of races with Kaulig Racing, to where all of a sudden within a couple of years, I was running 54 racings during the year with them, between O’Reilly and Cup. I love this team; Matt, Chris, all the men and women at Kaulig Racing. I always start with Matt and Chris because they’re the leadership of the team and they have been from the start of it. This is my home. Sometimes it can be a dysfunctional home on all ends. I’m the first one to admit it… I’m a little crazy, you hear it on the radio. But we love each other and we will fight to the death for each other. When I thought I retired the first time, I had two O’Reilly wins and one Cup win. And now, we have like 21 wins together. I’ve gotten to kiss the bricks at Indianapolis. I got to win at Charlotte. I got to win on ovals. I got one of the coolest finishes ever at Bristol. I owe the happiness of my career to them. Whether it’s good enough in my mind, which like I’ve said, I wish I’ve done more. But if I would have retired the first time, I would have been kind of miserable about not doing enough. We’ve done some pretty damn cool things, and hopefully we’ve got more to go. I owe the happiness of my career when I’m done to Matt and Chris.” |