Cindric also did his customary review of the crew on each car, looked at the best fits for personality, and made a number of revisions for 2013.

“We mixed up the pit crews quite a bit, or the overall crews,” he said. “Took a clean sheet-of-paper approach to all the crews. Made quite a few changes on all fronts. We’ll have a fresh look in all the pits. It’ll be different.”

Cindric also spoke on the reasoning behind Allmendinger’s test today at Sebring and what’s expected from the driver and team.
“I think you can’t expect much in a one-day test,” he said. “You just have to have the faith that he has the ability. It's going to take a while to shake some rust off. Our bigger concern is getting the pieces of the puzzle in place to where we can actually race together. It's not really a test of his abilities; it's a test to prepare in case we get the opportunity to race together.

Like his approach to Team Penske’s crew, Cindric says Allmendinger is being given the clean-sheet treatment after being fired by Roger Penske.

“From our perspective he’s paid his dues relative to last year,” he said. “He's obviously talented. He's done everything everybody’s asked of him. He understands that he made a mistake. You see guys like Chris Carter going into the Hall of Fame in the NFL and going through bigger issues than that. I thought it was interesting, they asked Chris Carter what's his biggest... what was his biggest hurdle? And he said it was substance abuse. He said ‘the best thing that ever happened to me was when Philadelphia cut me.’ And he said ‘that was my wake-up call. From then on my career took off.’

“AJ…this kid knows he made a mistake. He's owned up to it. He's done everything everybody’s asked him to do and he's got talent. I think he deserves a shot. When you look at who's available, he's among the best guys out there. So we'll see what happens.”

Marshall Pruett is SPEED.com's Auto Racing Editor, covering IndyCar and sports cars. Now in his 27th year in the sport, Pruett was an open-wheel mechanic, engineer and manager before joining SPEED. He also contributes to RACER, Road & Track and Racecar Engineering. Follow him @MarshallPruett.