0 for 2 Allmendinger not giving up

A.J. Allmendinger hung out in the California Speedway garage Sunday unintentionally incognito wearing jeans, sneakers, a hooded sweatshirt and sipping from a can of Red Bull energy drink. Photo courtesy of Toyota Motorsports

This was not exactly how he had planned to spend his weekend. He wanted to be noticed, believe him, but life is challenging in the NASCAR Nextel Cup series, maybe even more than he thought.

"It's easy," Allmendinger said, facetiously. "I love sitting here watching cars go by on the race track and me not in them."

All jokes aside.

"It's tough," he said. "I won't lie — it's tougher than I ever expected."

Allmendinger, trying to make the transition from Champ Car racing to the Nextel Cup series, is 0-for-2 in starts this year with first-year, Toyota-backed Team Red Bull. Despite limited practice last Friday — the team was at the back of the line for inspection and was delayed 45 minutes — he was oh-so-close to qualifying for Sunday's Auto Club 500, missing by a tenth of a second.

Disappointed? Yes. Discouraged? Hardly.

"I'm never going to quit," said Allmendinger, who won five Champ Car series races last year. "Stuff like this [missing the race] pisses me off to start and then makes me want to work harder to make it. Sure, you want to make the show and have everything come easy and just be great … but the biggest thing is, we were close — we were a tenth away, and that's something to learn off of." More at ESPN.com