Tyler Reddick might have one of the fastest cars in the NASCAR Cup Series, but he and his 23XI Racing team haven’t done themselves any favors in trying to show it.
“That’s pretty much it,” Reddick said Saturday about the team’s lack of execution in recent weeks. “We’ve got plenty of speed, it’s just we got to have clean races. It’s really difficult in this day and age of this Cup (Series) racing to have mistakes, rebound from it and still win.
“We haven’t had many of those this year, and that’s basically what we have to do.”
Reddick started and finished sixth last weekend in New Hampshire. It was his first top-10 finish since late May at Charlotte Motor Speedway. But it wasn’t a clean top-10 finish in New Hampshire as Reddick was called or speeding on pit road at the end of the first stage.
Some of the other mistakes or issues the No. 45 team has made in recent weeks:
Atlanta: pit crew called for being over the wall too soon.
Chicago: Reddick goes into the Turn 6 tire barriers with 18 laps to go and gets stuck.
Nashville: Reddick spins onto pit road as the right-rear wheel comes off.
Sonoma: suffered a flat left-front tire with 14 laps to go.
St. Louis: Reddick gets spun in Turn 1 on lap two. Explodes a brake rotor with 66 laps to go.
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He led eight laps in Chicago before nosing into the tire barriers, led 33 laps in Nashville and four laps in St. Louis.
Before his sixth-place finish in New Hampshire, Reddick had finished 27th or worse in the previous five races. And those results followed qualifying efforts of ninth (St. Louis), second (Sonoma), second (Nashville), second (Chicago), and 12th (Atlanta).
With six races to go before the postseason starts, Reddick didn’t deny being concerned about the team’s execution. He’s already locked into the postseason with a win from Circuit of The Americas.
“It’s good we can bounce back from so many of these things that happen,” Reddick said. “We’ve pretty much gotten used to unnatural races, so we have to get back to having some boring races where nothing really exciting happens.”
Reddick isn’t immune to making mistakes and has put some of the blame on his shoulders. He apologized over the radio to his team at Atlanta Motor Speedway before the race was called official for weather, saying he had “screwed” them two weeks in a row.
“At the time, I thought the penalty was on me,” Reddick said. “But we still have had a few races where I’ve cost the team and, collectively, we have to get out of that habit. We’re pretty much used to the craziest of things happening and just moving on and trying to get the best finish possible after the fact.
“We have to stop doing that and have normal days. I feel like if we’re fast enough where we don’t even have to give it 100 percent, honestly, we could run top 10, no problem.”
The good news is that Reddick and his team aren’t searching for speed, which is a far tougher task than needing to clean up their execution.
“Correct,” he said. “We’re just searching for ways to get the finishes that we’re deserved with the speed we have.”