Saving the best for last: Aric Almirola’s final season begins with best start in Cup career

In January, Almirola announced that he would step away from full-time driving at the end of the season to focus on his family. So far, he’s made the most out of his “retirement tour”.

Almirola finished fifth in the season-opening Daytona 500. He followed up that impressive run with two-consecutive sixth-place finishes at Fontana and Las Vegas, and he enters this weekend’s race at Phoenix ranked seventh in the overall point standings.

Counting his two finishes of sixth in the final two races of the 2021 season, Almirola has put together five consecutive top 10 finishes, the most since he had a run of nine in a row in 2020 (which is also the longest streak in his career).

Of course, it still is early in the season. While it's unlikely Almirola will continue to keep up his current pace, it’s still great to see him run so well knowing his tenure behind the wheel is coming to a close.

“We fight. That’s the beauty of this race team,” Almirola said. “We’re still learning this car. There’s a lot to learn about it and we’re still trying to figure a lot of things out.

"Practice is great, but we’ve got to make adjustments throughout the race and I feel like every race we’re learning more and more and more and we’re building a notebook. We’re making adjustments throughout the race and trying to figure it out.

“This team has so much fight in it and so much grit that it’s a lot of fun to race with these guys. We’ll keep digging and try and keep this streak alive of all these top 10 finishes. It’s a lot of fun when you run up front.”

In each race of 2022 so far, it seems like Almirola gets better as the laps wind down, specifically between Stage 2 and 3. Almirola agrees with that sentiment and gives credit to his crew chief for making it so.

“Drew [Blickensderfer] has been doing a great job of making good adjustments throughout the race and just getting the car better and better,” Almirola said. “We take the first half of the race and it’s really about learning.

"We make adjustments. If they’re no good, we go back on them and just keep fine-tuning on the car to get it to where we need to get it and, usually, the last few weeks we’ve gotten the car where we needed to have it at the end of the race. It’s been nice.”

The No. 10 team now heads to Phoenix, where Almirola has seven top 10 finishes and a best finish of fourth.

“It’s so much fun to race with this group of guys and everybody that supports us,” Almirola said. “Our Ford Mustang was fast. We’ve got some work to do to keep up with some of the other manufacturers. \

"We’ve got to continue to do our homework, but nonetheless, this is a great start to our season and a lot of fun.”