Tyler Reddick feels no additional pressure to cap off the season as the NASCAR Cup Series champion after winning the regular season title. But the 23XI Racing driver knows that pressure will build naturally if he makes a deep run in the postseason.
“You have to understand the moment, and you have to step up and perform and execute each weekend,” Reddick said. “This first round, obviously, presents its challenges, but there are 16 of us all in this together. If one of us has a bad day, there will probably be three or four of us that will, too. Hopefully, we can weather the bad days and just not have them.
“That’s has been our strong suit – when things happen, it seems to happen around us and we miss it. But we’ll just see how it goes.”
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Reddick claimed the regular season championship but begins as the number three seed with 28 playoff points. Number one playoff seed Kyle Larson, whom Reddick beat by one point for the honor, still wound up with 40 playoff points through his 10 stage wins, four race wins, and 10 additional playoff points for being second in the regular season standings.
The regular season championship came with 15 playoff points for Reddick, which were arguably far more valuable to him and the No. 45 team given how much they helped with his seeding. Before the reseed and the additional playoff points were awarded, Reddick only had 13 playoff points.
“I guess I didn’t really think about where I would have been if I had run second or third in the regular season, but it is good to see where we’re at,” Reddick said. “I know we gave away at least 12 playoff points at some point during the year, but I think everybody else who is a part of that conversation with me – Christopher [Bell] and Kyle [Larson] could all say the same. I think we are in a good spot.”
Reddick, Larson, and Bell were among the best of the Cup Series in the regular season. Larson led in race wins (four), while Bell (3) and Reddick (2) were close behind. Larson topped the series in laps led (1,088), while Bell was third-best in the category (721), and Reddick was fifth-best (473).
“I learned pretty quickly a month or so ago when we were trying to close in on Chase Elliott, Larson, and Denny Hamlin that when you all are running around the same spot, it’s hard to gain four, five, six points in a weekend,” Reddick said. “So, it’s good to have these extra playoff points.”
DraftKings, an official partner of NASCAR, lists Reddick as the fourth odds-on favorite to win the championship behind Larson, Denny Hamlin and Christopher Bell.
“Maybe the numbers show that, but I don’t think we are carrying ourselves around like we are the baddest group around,” Reddick said. “I think we just do a good job, each individual on the team, of doing their part throughout the week, and we just show up to the racetrack, and we have a good amount of focus, and we do a really good job of getting the results that we need.
“Even on the days that we have issues that has been a nice thing about this year is a number of times, countless times, it feels like, we’ve had some things not go our way, and we’ve been able to fight through it and still get the results.”
Reddick has never made the Championship 4 in his Cup Series career. He finished a career-best sixth in the championship standings last year.