By: Cole Cusumano

In yet another weekend dominated by Denny Hamlin and Kevin Harvick, the inaugural Fourth of July race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway was capped off with a fourth victory of the season for the driver of the No. 4. Understandably overshadowed by his Stewart-Haas Racing teammate, Aric Almirola hit a new career-high mark with his fifth consecutive top-five finish.

After rebounding from a left-front tire failure which forced a green flag pit stop in Stage One, the third-place finisher truly earned his podium result at a venue where track position is crucial. The brilliance of Almirola can no longer be ignored. In locking down his fifth top-five of the season, that marks a new record for the Cuba-born racer and the season is only halfway over.

“I think we’ve been trying to put a string of good runs together, and we’ve been able to do that,” Almirola said. “Five top-fives in a row is incredible.  That’s hard to do for anybody.  Just really proud of my race team. I keep telling the guys, I told them as soon as we took the checkered flag, if we consistently run in the top five and continue to contend, we’re going to put ourselves in position to win a race. We have to capitalize on it.”

He may not have the numbers in the wins column like his teammate Harvick, but the bottom line is the No. 10 team is bringing cars to the track capable of winning each week.

“I would say for most of my career I would show up to the racetrack and hope to have good runs,” Almirola revealed. “In 2018 about summertime all the way through the Playoffs, I showed up to the racetrack with a lot of confidence, feeling like we could win on any given weekend. In 2019, quite frankly, we struggled. I could never find any sort of consistency running up front.  I’m thoroughly impressed with Buga (Mike Bugarewicz, crew chief) and this whole 10 team. We’ve been bringing really fast cars to the racetrack. I feel like every weekend we expect to run top five now.”

Now sitting ninth in the standing and 105 points above the cutline, Almirola is the highest ranked driver without a victory, and he’s about as hot as you can get without winning. With eight races remaining before the Playoffs, the 36-year-old feels he now has the option to get aggressive in the upcoming events.

“We’re in a situation now to where we can gamble a little bit — we can be a little bit more aggressive, we cannot be so conservative and worried about points,” Almirola said. “Not that we’re going to throw caution to the wind, but we can certainly be more aggressive.”

Almirola expressed his excitement heading to the next four scheduled races, as he feels these are some of his best tracks statistically, as opposed to the past five which he considered to be some of his worst.

The series’ next event takes place at Kentucky Speedway, where Almirola has scored a top-20 in each of his last four visits, including an eighth in 2018.