His first two initials are AJ, but his last name is not Foyt.

He doesn’t play baseball, but he’s like a good utility hitter who knows how to do the best with what he has, earning him the colorful nickname of “The Dinger.”

For nearly a quarter-century, Anthony James Allmendinger’s initials and nickname have preceded him on both IndyCar and NASCAR racetracks from California to New Hampshire.

The Los Gatos, California native turned 44 on December 16 and will enter his eighth season of competition for Kaulig Racing in 2026.

Since his first start in CART at the age of 22 back in 2004, Allmendinger has compiled a combined 673 race starts in both IndyCar (46 starts, including five wins) and NASCAR (627 starts, including three wins in the Cup Series and 18 in the Xfinity Series).

His best season finish in the Cup Series was 13 in 2014 with JTG-Daugherty Racing (the only time he’s made Cup playoffs). But he’s fared better in the Xfinity Series, with a career-best finish of 3 in 2024 (which earned him a return to Cup in 2025), as well as other top five season finishes of 4 in 2021 and 5 in 2022.

The Dinger has driven for a number of teams in his career, including Red Bull Racing, Michael Waltrip Racing, Gillett Evernham Racing, Richard Petty Motorsports, Penske Racing, Phoenix Racing, JTG-Daugherty Racing, and since 2019 with Kaulig Racing.

Allmendinger readily admits that after finishing a career-best third place in the Xfinity Series in 2024, winding up 26 in the 2025 Cup season was frustrating at times (0 wins, 2 top five and 7 top 10 finishes), but has high hopes for an uptick in 2026 behind the wheel of the No. 16 Chevrolet ZL-1, with primary sponsorship once again from CELSIUS Energy Drink.

In EssentiallySports’ ongoing exclusive series of one-on-one Q&A interviews with some of the biggest names in NASCAR, we spent almost an hour talking with Allmendinger. Here are some of the highlights of that interview:

Q. How do you describe yourself?

A. I’m pretty outgoing at times when I need to be, but I’m also pretty introverted and to myself. The biggest thing for me is just how much I care. I’m always hard on myself. That’s never going to change until the day I retire. And how much I care for the people that are working on my race car and for the race team.

There’s also a lot of dark moments. Like when I’m at home, and unfortunately, my wife’s probably got to deal with it. Just sadness and heartbreak and like frustration that I can’t be better for them, and I’m trying to be.

But at the end of the day, it’s just because I care 100%. There’s days I wish I cared less, honestly. I wish sometimes I had 10% less of care and be like, okay, it’s a bad week and I’m gonna go home and I don’t even think about it. But no, that’s not how it works. I think about it every day, whether I want to or not. Sometimes it’s on the forefront of my mind. Sometimes maybe it’s in the back of my mind. But I just care.

And I frustrate myself when I can’t be better for our race team. So I think at the end of the day, that’s all I ever want. People that have worked with me say, ‘Hey man, he cares, he works hard, he loves the team. He loves the men and women that work with him. He can also be a b-tch sometimes to work with. He can be a pain in the ass. He can be vocal. But, he does it because he cares for us and for just being the best.’

Is retirement on his radar?

Q. You just turned 44. Do you ever think about retirement?

A. All this is kind of a bonus. I feel like the Kaulig Racing part of my career is just a bonus, in that I thought I was retiring the first time when I started working for NBC, and I thought that was the path I was going down.

All of it has just been a bonus when there was a time in 2019 where I wasn’t racing and I was doing TV and I thought ok, this is fine, I’ve had a nice career, you always want more out of it. And with what’s happened at Kaulig Racing, we’ve done a lot of amazing things, I feel like, with the Xfinity wins, a couple of Cup wins.

Kissing the bricks at Indy will always stand out to me because that was a racetrack I always dreamed about winning at. When my seatbelt came undone at the (2013) Indy 500, that was my chance to win there (still finished seventh in his only career start in the Greatest Spectacle In Racing). So, everything we continue is a bonus.

(Allmendinger would eventually win at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, but on its road course in a Cup race in 2021 – Kaulig’s first IndyCar win – while also earning two other Cup wins, both on road courses at Watkins Glen (2014) and the Charlotte Roval (2023).

Q. You’ve always been willing to help Kaulig in whatever capacity it has asked you to be in. You finished fourth and fifth in Xfinity in 2021 and 2022, moved to Cup in 2023 (finished 21st) and then went back full-time to Xfinity in 2024. Ironically, you earned a career-best finish of third in Xfinity that season, only to move back to Cup in 2025, where you had a difficult season, finishing 26. Can you talk about the juxtaposition of the last several seasons, going back and forth between series, having success for one or two years and then struggling the next?

A. This past year, there’s been positives and a lot of negatives and you want to fix those negatives, but also at the same point, to be brutally honest, Kaulig Racing is in an interesting position with what’s happening with RAM (bringing Dodge back to the Truck Series as a possible prelude to eventually coming back to the Cup and O’Reilly Series, as well) and all that.

But on the Cup side of it, I think there’s going to be a lot of ups and downs because we’re kind of on our own the next couple of years. Hopefully, this partnership with RAM flourishes, and for many years down the road for Kaulig Racing.

For me, over the next couple of years, we’ve got to figure out kind of what our team’s going to look like, and there’s going to be good weekends, there’s going to be bad weekends, just like any other, but it’s different when you’re kind of on your own. So I think just trying to take it all in stride and be happy when you have the great weekends … and take the bad weekends and just kind of move on with them.

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How much does he enjoy being with Kaulig Racing?

Q. You’ve been with Kaulig Racing in various capacities and various series since 2019. You constantly refer to it as a family where everyone gets along with each other and pulls for each other. It’s really become a great home, right?

A. I love my race team. That’s our family, and the rest of the drivers, the rest of the teams are trying to steal money from us and me, so we’re kind of to ourselves at the racetrack and it’s more just focused on the team people.

Q. You’ll be teamed once again in the 2026 Cup season with Ty Dillon. Talk about the dynamic between the two of you as teammates, as well as the guys who will be driving RAM trucks for Kaulig.

A. Where I’m at now in my life and career, trying to give back the best that I can and always be there for my teammates, that’s something that I try to be really good about.

I’ve had some of the best teammates ever, and one of them that passed away. (Late IndyCar driver) Justin Wilson was the best teammate I could ever imagine. He was a little bit older than me, but we were still trying to fight to get to the top. I probably wasn’t a great teammate because I was super young, trying to always make a name for myself, trying to prove myself.

I looked at sometimes my teammate is enemy No. 1, because that’s who you’re compared against, especially in open-wheel racing, and Justin was always the best teammate. I always asked him, ‘Why were you so good to me, even in my down times?’ I thought there were so many times that I was down that he could pretty much bury me and be like, ‘I’m done with him,’ but he’d always pull me back up.

Something he said will always resonate with me: I asked him ‘Why would he help me when he could bury me (on-track)?’ He said, ‘Because if I buried you, I wasn’t going to get any better. I needed you to get back up and keep pushing hard,’ because every time I pushed hard, it made him better, and that was something that always stood out to me.

With the other guys on the team, I always want success for Kaulig Racing, so I try to be open and honest with the guys. I try to be there whenever they need me, but I will not force myself on them. I always tell them, I’m not going to bug you and call you and all that. But if you want to ask questions, I’m here. If you don’t, I totally understand.

Like with Ty Dillon, his first year really working together, I really enjoyed Ty. We kind of have the same personalities in a sense. I wouldn’t call us introverts at the racetrack, but you’re there to do a job. I always try to be very friendly.

As for the guys in Trucks, Daniel Dye, we have got a really good relationship. This year, we golfed a lot. Obviously, Justin Haley’s back, and I love that. I call him my son (laughs). We had such a good relationship as teammates, and I love having him back. Butterbean (Brendan Queen), I’m just getting to know, but the conversation I’ve had with him, he seems like a super good guy, and we’ll see what the rest of it looks like.

Is returning to broadcasting the likely next chapter for him?

Q. You mentioned that you thought your racing days were just about over in 2019 when you drove only a part-time schedule, and that you were looking to a future in broadcasting while also serving as a part-time IMSA and NASCAR analyst for NBC TV for two seasons. Then Kaulig came calling. Do you think you’ll eventually go back to broadcasting once you’ve competed in your last career race?

A. When I wasn’t racing and I was doing TV, I thought, okay, this is fine. I’ve had a nice career. You always want more out of it. I enjoyed it a lot, especially on the sports car side of it. That was a fun thing. The first year with NBC, I got to go do a lot of different broadcasts and my ultimate one was doing Supercross. That’s still my favorite form of racing. It’s what I wanted to do as a kid.

So, I got to do the Supercross race at the Meadowlands with Ricky Carmichael and Ralph Shaheen. I thought that was the coolest thing ever, because that’s basically what I grew up watching and loving, so I enjoyed it. I love being able to tell the story. It’s definitely a lot of work to be good at it, and I was very fortunate with the people I was surrounded by, but I would definitely enjoy doing it again.

Q. You briefly held minority ownership in Michael Shank Racing earlier in your career. Any thoughts about possible team ownership in your future, too?

A. No, no, hell no (he said with a laugh). There’s 0% chance of team ownership, unless they just want to hand me a portion of a team that I don’t have to put any money into.

What’s next and would he like to try the Indy 500 again?

Q. Do you have a timeline for the next chapter of your life after racing?

A. I don’t really have an outlook because I don’t really know what the timeline is. With Kaulig Racing right now, we have a time period of what we think, but maybe it’s going really well, and maybe I’m still really competitive, and maybe they think I’m still helping, and maybe that time period gets shifted again. I mean, I could do part-time racing still and be a part of the team, driver development, stuff like that, or maybe I’m at a point in my mindset where okay, I’m done, I just want to get away. But right now, I think it’s more about not trying to focus on what that’s going to look like, just taking it as it comes, whenever that time period happens.

Q. You began your career in CART, which is now IndyCar. Do you ever wonder what might have been if you stayed with IndyCar instead of moving to NASCAR? And do you ever get the desire like Kyle Larson to race in the Indy 500 again?

A. No, I’ll never do (the 500) again. I’m at a point in my life where to go run the Indy 500, it’s a full commitment. We see what Kyle Larson had to do. And you have to be in the car running 240 miles per hour. As safe as these cars are now, you still have to go in there with the mindset that anything can happen. You’ve got to be okay with that. It’s auto racing. It’s like that in any type of race that you’re doing, but the 500 is the extreme of it. Yeah, I’ll always follow IndyCar but I’m just a fan now.

Q. Throughout your career in both IndyCar and NASCAR, who’s had the most influence upon you?

A. Guys like Jeff Gordon and Mark Martin were always really good to me. I could call Kevin Harvick and know that I could ask him whatever and he was going to tell me the truth.

The guy that honestly helped me a lot, especially when I came back to Xfinity racing, was Kyle Busch. He was always the guy that I could call or text, and he’d take all the time I needed to break it down, like all the marks that he had, pretty much everything that he had. He was the guy that would go through a lot with me, and I never would doubt that he was lying to me or anything like that.

Q. Do you have a bucket list?

A. No, I really don’t have a bucket list. Sure, I’d love to run the Rolex again, and if you had to pin me down and say I still have to choose one race I would love to do at least one time, I’d go do Le Mans. That’d be pretty amazing. But if I don’t do it, it’s not like I’m heartbroken.

Any regrets or changes you would have made?

Q. When you look back at your career, is there anything you would have changed or anything that you would have liked to have accomplished that you haven’t accomplished up to this point?

A. Sure, you’d love to win more Cup races for sure and win a championship, but there’s nothing that stands out because there’s such a big list that you wish you could have done. But I’m pretty fortunate that I’ve gotten to win in IndyCar at the top level, I’ve won Cup and Xfinity races and I’ve won the Rolex.

There’s not a lot of guys in the world that have been able to do that. And I’m lucky enough to say that I’m one of them.