Tyler Reddick battled through a suspected stomach bug to claim the NASCAR Cup Series regular-season championship by one point.
Reddick took the honor over Kyle Larson. It is the first time Reddick has won the regular-season championship, which comes with an additional 15 playoff points.
But the story of Sunday night was the personal fight Reddick endured to get to the finish. The Southern 500 had not hit the 100-lap mark when it was reported that the 23XI Racing driver was feeling ill behind the wheel.
“No, that pretty much tops it,” Reddick said. “That’s the worst I’ve felt.”
Reddick asked for plain crackers to help his stomach at the end of the first stage. The team gave him food and medication to help his stomach. But the pills were too small, and Reddick dropped them.
On an ensuing pit stop, Reddick received a water bottle with the medication crushed into it. A second type of bottle was also passed to Reddick later in the race.
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“I guess it’s just a stomach bug or something,” Reddick said. “My son [Beau] was feeling a little down last week at Daytona — we had to take him to the infield care center after the race and he was struggling pretty bad on race day, on Saturday. I feel like midday Friday, I started really struggling, and I was hoping Saturday morning it would be gone. It was terrible on Saturday and I woke up Sunday with the same hope it’d be gone and felt good pretty much all the way up until the race.
“It must have been the bump off of (Turn) 2 or something. It just really, really got bad by the end of Stage 1 and it just stayed there the rest of the way. I’m just really thankful for a lot of really great people on our team; they were feeding me the right stuff in the car to help me manage it the best I could. It’s just smart people — they were able to put the right stuff in my drink to help calm my stomach down. At one point, I’m just waiting to puke all over myself and thankfully, they kept that from happening and a whole lot of other gross stuff. We were able to avoid a lot of that, which was nice, but it was extremely uncomfortable in the car all night.”
Despite the illness, Reddick stayed in the top 10 all night. He started sixth and finished 10th and was in the top 10 at the end of both stages.
A fast car helped Reddick keep focused on the task at hand. Reddick entered the weekend 17 points ahead of Larson, but the Hendrick driver dominated the night with both stage wins and put the pressure on down to the finish.
Reddick goes into the postseason seeded third with 28 playoff points.
“It’s just a testament to all the work that everyone at 23XI — here at the racetrack or back at Air Speed — puts into this,” Reddick said. “We’re on year four of their goals and it’s just been really, really fun the last two years to be a part of this process, building up to where we want to be. It takes a lot of hard work to be as consistent as we’ve been through the summer stretch.
“I feel like we had rocky starts (the last two years) to get going, but it’s nice to get to where we did in the middle of the year and start thinking about points. I think it really helped us be more consistent and get us in the right mindset for these playoffs: just manage risk versus reward. We’ll be doing it three races at a time here soon.”