Aric Almirola thought he was on the verge of something great with Stewart-Haas Racing, given how the first year driving the No. 10 Ford Mustang went.
Almirola had a career year in 2018, finishing fifth in the championship standings. It included a trip to victory lane in the fall race at Talladega Superspeedway, leading over 100 laps in a single season for the first time, a new mark in the average finish category and at the time, a career-high number of top five and top-10 finishes.
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But instead of it being more of the same, Almirola and his team have struggled. Something Almirola looks at, in his sixth year driving for Tony Stewart and Gene Haas, with a bit of surprise.
“No, certainly not what I expected,” Almirola said of his tenure with Stewart-Haas. “I expected more years like the first year, to be honest. I showed up here in 2018, and we not only won a race, but I was in contention to win probably five or six races throughout that year and consistently ran in the top 10, top five.
“(It) was a team that on any given weekend we showed up to a racetrack (and) felt like we could win, and that has certainly not been the case the last couple of years. It’s disappointing, for sure, but a lot of this is part of the sport, too. Our sport is very cyclical.”
There has been only one trip to victory lane since 2018 and although Almirola earned berths in the playoffs in 2019, 2020, and 2021, he hasn’t finished better than 14th in the standings, and he failed to make the playoff last season.
“We had a great year in 2018, not only for me personally but organizationally with winning a lot of races,” he said. “Then we went into 2019, and we weren’t quite as good as 2018 as an organization; 2020, we were still just OK, but we weren’t as dominant and as good as we had been in the past years. So, I feel like, for me, I totally anticipated coming over here and having success and building on that success to having an opportunity to go and be a champion.
“That hasn’t come to fruition, and I’m certainly disappointed about it, but, at the end of the day that doesn’t define me as a human being. As a race car driver, I always want more and want to be a champion, want to win multiple races in a year, and I have all of those lofty goals, but sometimes things don’t always go the way you want them to.”
Almirola has one top-10 finish going into Sonoma Raceway (Sunday, 3:30 p.m. ET, FOX) before the season’s first and only off weekend. He is 25th in the championship standings with three DNFs and 44 laps led.
It is another year of fighting for Almirola and his team. A challenge he embraces, just like trying to be a consistent winner and Cup Series champion.
“Life is not easy; everybody has good days and bad days,” Almirola said. “Everybody has good years and bad years. There are seasons to life. There are seasons to a career and so, for me, it doesn’t water down the fact that I’m still racing at the highest level of stock car auto racing, something that I dreamed about as a kid.
“I’m getting to live out my childhood dream driving a NASCAR Cup Series car against 39 of the other best race car drivers in the world that drive stock cars, so I am very appreciative and very grateful of what I get to do.
“Do I want more wins and championships and all those things? Absolutely. I’m a competitive person, but at the end of the day, you sit there, and you look at Richard Petty, who is the King of our sport. I’ve gotten the opportunity to spend a lot of time with Richard, and he doesn’t ever sit down at Thanksgiving with all 200 of his trophies. He sits down at Thanksgiving with his family, and he sits down to share a meal with people he cares about.
“All the time I’ve ever gotten to spend with him and talk about things outside of racing and talking about life, he’s been a huge impact on me just being able to recognize and realize that you don’t always have to chase the success because it doesn’t really define who you are once you stop driving a race car.
“What defines who you are is how you treat other people and how you are with the people you love, so, yeah, I think as a competitive person, I want to win everything, but the reality is that’s not the case.”