{"id":305101,"date":"2025-10-15T10:25:13","date_gmt":"2025-10-15T10:25:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/305101\/"},"modified":"2025-10-15T10:25:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T10:25:13","slug":"a-j-allmendinger-on-defining-success-and-the-power-of-longevity-12-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/305101\/","title":{"rendered":"A.J. Allmendinger on defining success and the power of longevity: 12 Questions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Each week, The Athletic asks the same 12 questions to a different race car driver. Up next: A.J. Allmendinger, the veteran NASCAR Cup Series driver for Kaulig Racing. This interview has been edited for clarity and length, but the full version is available on the 12 Questions Podcast<\/a>.<\/p>\n

1. What was one of the first autographs you got as a kid, and what do you remember about that moment?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Harry Gant. Sonoma. My favorite car, my favorite color growing up was green \u2014 still is \u2014 and I just loved the Skoal Bandit car. I think my parents still have the picture of me standing behind the Harry Gant car, holding up the one finger.<\/p>\n

Side note: I saw Harry last week, and he looks exactly the same. From the time he was racing until now, he still looks exactly the same. So whatever anti-aging cream he\u2019s using, I\u2019m gonna need to get on that.<\/p>\n

2. What is the most miserable you\u2019ve ever been inside of a race car?<\/strong><\/p>\n

One year in the Rolex 24, I got one of those 3 or 4 a.m. stints. I got in the car, the caution came out as soon as I got in and then we had a fog delay \u2014 but we had to keep running under yellow for like two hours.<\/p>\n

That was just misery because I was tired, there was no adrenaline flowing, and my whole stint was two hours under yellow. It got to the point where I kind of rested my head up against the side and woke up way down on the apron, down the back straightaway. So I had fallen asleep for probably 15 seconds.<\/p>\n

I just remember thinking how miserable that was, because there was nothing you could do. I got to the point where I was asking (team owner Michael) Shank, \u201cCan I pit?\u201d and he\u2019s like, \u201cNo, bud, we just gotta ride it out.\u201d And the worst part was when the fog lifted, I\u2019d run out of time, so they pitted me and got me out of the car.<\/p>\n

3. Outside of racing, what is your most recent memory of something you got way too competitive about?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Golf. Every time I play. But really, just with myself. I always joke with my buddies that I\u2019d rather lose shooting 76 and them shoot 75 than me shoot 85 and they shoot 86 and I beat them.<\/p>\n

Why do you do that to yourself?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s just a carryover from racing \u2014 you love it even though it drives you insane and gives you lots of misery at times. My wife always says, \u201cWhy don\u2019t you pick up a hobby that\u2019s not competitive?\u201d I say, \u201cNo, I just want to be better at the hobbies that I\u2019ve got.\u201d I love it and hate it all at the same time, just like racing.<\/p>\n

4. What do people get wrong about you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

To a certain degree, people think I\u2019m outgoing all the time. I would say I\u2019m pretty reserved or shy in general, except around my friends and when I\u2019m in a place I\u2019m comfortable.<\/p>\n

You get me in the right situation, and obviously I\u2019m outgoing and have fun with it, but otherwise, I\u2019m more to myself except when I\u2019m with my buddies.<\/p>\n

\"A.J.<\/p>\n

\n Now in his fifth season with Kaulig Racing, A.J. Allmendinger has been racing at least part-time in the Cup Series every year since 2007. (Jonathan Bachman \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n

5. What kind of Uber passenger are you, and how much do you care about your Uber rating?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Don\u2019t care about my Uber rating. And I\u2019m pretty quiet as a passenger. I know they\u2019re just trying to get me where I\u2019m going. We\u2019ve got a lot of other things to worry about in life than being pissed off at an Uber driver.<\/p>\n

6. I\u2019m asking each person a hot-topic-type question. Your son Aero just turned 2 years old. Your upbringing helped shape you a lot \u2014 your mom was a nurse, your dad was a carpet layer, they mortgaged the house three times to help your career. You\u2019ve said you didn\u2019t come from privilege, you had to grind for everything and that shaped who you are. But your son is going to grow up in a much different financial situation than you did. How do you take the values important to your core and instill them into him?<\/strong><\/p>\n

My parents always said to me they\u2019d do everything they could for me as long as I kept showing that I wanted to do it. It was always a family thing; I\u2019m named after A.J. Foyt, so my dad obviously truly loved (racing). My mom loved it too, but she was the quieter person about it.<\/p>\n

To me, it\u2019s about embracing the challenge. Whatever he wants to do, go out there and work your butt off for it. I\u2019ll never force him to race cars or play golf. But whatever he chooses, put everything you have into it. If you\u2019re not going to, then there\u2019s no point in even doing it.<\/p>\n

Part of me still doing this now is trying to make sure we never have to worry about mortgaging things. But I just want him, whatever he goes after, to go 100 percent. If you don\u2019t, then there\u2019s no point even trying.<\/p>\n

7. This is my 16th year of doing these 12 Questions interviews, so I\u2019m going back to one from the first time we did this. In 2011, I asked you who was the most underrated driver in NASCAR, and you said David Reutimann. When you look around the garage now, who isn\u2019t getting the credit or attention they should?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Christopher Bell. I know he wins a lot and he\u2019s on a great team, but to me, he doesn\u2019t make a lot of mistakes. He gets everything out of it. He\u2019s been in the Championship 4 the last couple of years and doesn\u2019t really do it with any controversy around him.<\/p>\n

So even though he wins a lot, it\u2019s probably Christopher Bell. He\u2019s super good.<\/p>\n

8. Other than one of your teammates, name a driver you\u2019d be one of the first people to congratulate them in victory lane if they won a race.<\/strong><\/p>\n

For sure, it\u2019s Justin Haley. I love the dude, and I think he\u2019s super good. We were two laps down, but that last lap at Daytona (in August), I was his biggest fan watching him go for the win (Haley finished third). So definitely him.<\/p>\n

9. How much do you use AI technology, whether for your job or daily life? Are you into ChatGPT or anything like that?<\/strong><\/p>\n

No. I actually don\u2019t use AI hardly at all. My wife uses it a lot \u2014 I do not. I just stay in my lane. Makes it easy.<\/p>\n

10. What is a time in your life that felt really challenging, but you\u2019re proud of how you responded to it?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Just trying to come back and fight through it and still be here \u2014 from \u201907 to now \u2014 is pretty amazing. I would have never thought that was going to happen.<\/p>\n

After being suspended (for taking Adderall in 2012, which cost him his ride at Team Penske) and just coming back, having to go through the pain of it and fighting my way back in and still being here \u2026 I wish it never happened, but those are things you learn from and get better.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s pretty wild though that all those times you felt you were year-to-year, you\u2019re still here and racing full-time Cup in 2025.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Part of me \u2014 sometimes it\u2019s good mentally, sometimes it\u2019s very bad mentally \u2014 but I still live like that now. I\u2019m always out there trying to run a lap or run a race just to prove it to myself: \u201cHey, you still belong here.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the reason I say I have the best life in the world, but I\u2019m probably miserable every day because it\u2019s not good enough. I just want to continually prove to myself that I belong here.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s how you drive yourself.<\/strong><\/p>\n

That\u2019s how I\u2019m still here. It\u2019s not the most mentally healthy way of living, I can promise you that. There are a lot of dark moments. But it\u2019s the way I push myself.<\/p>\n

11. What needs to happen in NASCAR to take the sport to the next level of popularity?<\/strong><\/p>\n

We could talk about making the racing better and all that, but more than anything, you\u2019ve got to get the popular drivers more mainstream. Whether that\u2019s NASCAR pushing it more, or the drivers themselves \u2014 whether that\u2019s their personality and they don\u2019t want to be in the (spotlight) \u2014 but the most popular guys have to be mainstream.<\/p>\n

Back in the day, Dale Earnhardt and Jeff Gordon were mainstream. Even if you weren\u2019t a race fan, you knew who they were. That\u2019s what we\u2019ve got to get back to.<\/p>\n

12. Each week, I ask a driver to give me a question for the next person. The last one was Jesse Love<\/a>, and he asked: For someone who\u2019s had to jump around from team to team, series to series and even sport to sport, has there ever been a point in your career where you had to redefine what success means to you \u2014 or has it always been the same?<\/strong><\/p>\n

You redefine it every weekend. You show up to the race with the ultimate goal to win, but in our sport, you\u2019re never guaranteed that. I used to love talking to Brad Daugherty when I drove for him, and I said, \u201cYou know, Brad, in every other sport you\u2019re probably going to win a game. In the NFL, two teams went 0-16, but they still won the next year. In the NBA, the worst record ever is like 9-73 \u2014 they still walked off the court nine times feeling good about themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no guarantee you\u2019re ever going to walk into the hauler knowing you\u2019re a winner. So you\u2019ve got to redefine what success is each week. If you go out there as a team and execute \u2014 if I\u2019m perfect that day as a driver, the pit crew is perfect and we finish 12th? That\u2019s probably a pretty good day, because we got everything out of it.<\/p>\n

Every weekend, the ultimate goal is to win, but maybe it\u2019s a track you\u2019re not very good at or where the team struggles. If 15th is the goal that day and you finish 14th, you\u2019ve won that day. That\u2019s how I try to look at it, because this sport will bury you if the ultimate goal is to win, and if you don\u2019t win, it\u2019s just misery.<\/p>\n

The next interview is with Dale Earnhardt Jr. Do you have a question I can ask him?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Why did he always flip me off when we were racing against each other?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Each week, The Athletic asks the same 12 questions to a different race car driver. Up next: A.J.…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":305102,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[1833,1406,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-305101","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-motorsports","9":"tag-nascar","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115377702680733623","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305101\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/305102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}