Tag: Tyler Reddick

NASCAR starting lineup for Cup Series playoff race at Homestead in 2024

Check out the NASCAR Cup Series starting lineup for the 2024 Straight Talk Wireless 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway this weekend!

Homestead-Miami Speedway is next for the NASCAR Cup Series, and 23XI Racing will lead the field to the green flag. [autotag]Tyler Reddick[/autotag] won the pole for the 2024 Straight Talk Wireless 400 at Homestead this weekend. Kyle Larson will join Reddick on the front row for Sunday afternoon’s event. It is Reddick’s third pole position of the 2024 NASCAR season.

Christopher Bell and Denny Hamlin will follow the two drivers on the second row. Most notably, Ryan Blaney, Chris Buescher, Ross Chastain, William Byron, and Joey Logano all qualified 20th or worse for Sunday’s event. Byron, who will start in 25th place, is the worst of the playoff drivers not locked into the Championship 4.

The full starting lineup is available below.

NASCAR Cup Series starting lineup, 2024 Straight Talk Wireless 400 at Homestead

  1. No. 45 Tyler Reddick (P)
  2. No. 5 Kyle Larson (P)
  3. No. 20 Christopher Bell (P)
  4. No. 11 Denny Hamlin (P)
  5. No. 47 Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
  6. No. 19 Martin Truex Jr.
  7. No. 9 Chase Elliott (P)
  8. No. 23 Bubba Wallace
  9. No. 31 Daniel Hemric
  10. No. 7 Justin Haley
  11. No. 48 Alex Bowman
  12. No. 4 Josh Berry
  13. No. 14 Chase Briscoe
  14. No. 54 Ty Gibbs
  15. No. 77 Carson Hocevar
  16. No. 10 Noah Gragson
  17. No. 8 Kyle Busch
  18. No. 6 Brad Keselowski
  19. No. 71 Zane Smith
  20. No. 12 Ryan Blaney (P)
  21. No. 17 Chris Buescher
  22. No. 1 Ross Chastain
  23. No. 99 Daniel Suarez
  24. No. 34 Michael McDowell
  25. No. 24 William Byron (P)
  26. No. 22 Joey Logano (P)
  27. No. 15 Kaz Grala
  28. No. 43 Erik Jones
  29. No. 42 John Hunter Nemechek
  30. No. 3 Austin Dillon
  31. No. 38 Todd Gilliland
  32. No. 16 A.J. Allmendinger
  33. No. 51 Corey LaJoie
  34. No. 21 Harrison Burton
  35. No. 41 Ryan Preece
  36. No. 2 Austin Cindric
  37. No. 44 J.J. Yeley
  38. No 66 Chad Finchum

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Reddick paces Miami practice as Logano, Bell encounter issues

Tyler Reddick was fastest in Saturday morning’s NASCAR Cup Series practice session at Homestead-Miami Speedway at 167.770 mph (32.187 seconds). Reddick (P) ran 31 laps in the session. But he laid down the fastest time on his first lap on track. Ross …

Tyler Reddick was fastest in Saturday morning’s NASCAR Cup Series practice session at Homestead-Miami Speedway at 167.770 mph (32.187 seconds).

Reddick (P) ran 31 laps in the session. But he laid down the fastest time on his first lap on track.

Ross Chastain was second fastest at 167.764 mph. Bubba Wallace was third at 167.754 mph, with Michael McDowell fourth at 167.676 mph, and Brad Keselowski fifth at 167.338 mph.

Erik Jones was sixth fastest at 167.338 mph, Martin Truex Jr. was seventh at 166.842 mph, and Denny Hamlin (P) was fastest at 166.646 mph. Joey Logano (P) and Zane Smith completed the top 10 at 166.636 mph and 166.543 mph respectively.

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Logano did not run the full session. After logging 25 laps, Logano communicated to his Team Penske group that he might have a power steering issue.

“I wish I knew; we’d be able to fix it,” Logano said of the issue. “It just seemed like it was locking up as it was going, so we’re probably going to have to take a look at that after qualifying. It’s not one of the approved changes, I don’t believe, so we’ll have to figure that one out later. But we can still qualify for a pit stall, at least.

“I think our Hunt Brothers Mustang is pretty good on the long run. That’s kind of where we’ve been: good on the long run, not so great on the short run. So, we’ll try to give the short run some love for tomorrow and get the power steering working as well.”

Kyle Larson (P) was 14th fastest with Christopher Bell (P) 16th. Bell ran 17 laps and then reported his Toyota had “hit the ground” during a run. The team told Bell to come to pit road if it might be a tire issue, which turned out to be a flat right front.

“It’s going to be hard to say but I don’t think so,” Bell said when asked by NBC Sports if the practice was wasted. “I think we got a number of competitive laps and we learned a little bit. I’m very thankful I was able to catch it and these guys gave me good direction to bring it in because if you drag the underbodies on these cars, it’s pretty much a weekend ruiner. So, I think we got away with one there.”

William Byron (P) was 26th fastest, Ryan Blaney (P) was 29th, and Chase Elliott (P) was 33rd. Elliott was the slowest of the eight playoff drivers.

Noah Gragson was fastest in the best 10 consecutive lap average. Gragson topped Keselowski, Reddick, Wallace, and Michael McDowell.

There are 38 drivers entered in the Straight Talk Wireless 400.

*P denotes playoff driver.

Reddick’s wild ride in Vegas puts him on the back foot for Homestead

Tyler Reddick went for a familiar move Sunday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, but it backfired and resulted in a rollover on the frontstretch – then he drove away from the crash scene. On lap 89 of the South Point 400, Reddick took a run he had in the …

Tyler Reddick went for a familiar move Sunday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, but it backfired and resulted in a rollover on the frontstretch — then he drove away from the crash scene.

On lap 89 of the South Point 400, Reddick took a run he had in the far outside lane off Turn 4 and got to the outside of Chase Elliott and Martin Truex Jr. The hole closed quickly as everyone came together, with Reddick bouncing off the wall and Chase Elliott near simultaneously. He then continued down the track and hit the right side of Brad Keselowski’s car.

Reddick’s No. 45 Toyota then spun through the grass and, when it hit the pavement of the quarter-mile track, was sent into a full flip before landing on its wheels. Once the car was done sliding, Reddick was back on the throttle and drove to his pit stall, but the team quickly realized the suspension was broken and the day was over.

 

“I figured there was a toe link or something like that bent,” Reddick said. “I didn’t know the left front was broke. I got into the stall and realized I didn’t have brakes, and I was like, ‘OK, this can’t be good,’ so I was hoping that we could have fixed it.

“I was ready to keep going. But the car was just absolutely destroyed.”

The incident happened as he was running inside the top five and it was less than 10 minutes after he won the first stage.

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“You just have to be aggressive on restarts,” Reddick said. “It’s how the Next Gen racing has been from the beginning. I saw them both have a moment, and I just had to [make a] split second decision. You have to be aggressive on the restart; it’s hard to pass after a while.

“Being myself on a mile-and-a-half, being aggressive – by the time I realized I was in trouble, [Truex] started sliding and [Elliott] was coming up, and I was pretty much already on their outside at that point, with nowhere to really go. I needed to make the decision earlier when I saw them sliding to be more conservative to avoid an incident. It’s just not who I am, but it is unfortunate. It took us out of the race. We had a really, really fast Jordan Brand Toyota Camry [and] probably would have been in the mix all race long. But we will go to Homestead, a place where I have had to get it done before and go for it there.”

Reddick began the round 10 points above the cutline. He is now sixth and 30 points below a transfer spot, with Homestead-Miami Speedway and Martinsville Speedway filling out the round.

“We can still have a good day at Homestead and be in the mix in Martinsville,” Reddick said. “Ideally, it would have been nice to win today. It would be nice to win next week, and that’s what we will focus on, but thankfully we got 10 stage points in Stage 1, and it’s not like we’re absolutely out of it on points yet. We’re going to have to be perfect from here on out, probably.”

Reddick leads Cup practice at Las Vegas, Blaney crashes

Tyler Reddick was fastest in NASCAR Cup Series practice Saturday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, while fellow championship contender Ryan Blaney was relegated to a backup car. Reddick (P) topped the board at 183.187mph (29.478s). The fast time was set …

Tyler Reddick was fastest in NASCAR Cup Series practice Saturday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, while fellow championship contender Ryan Blaney was relegated to a backup car.

Reddick (P) topped the board at 183.187mph (29.478s). The fast time was set during Reddick’s fifth lap on the track.

Martin Truex Jr. was second fastest at 182.723mph; Ty Gibbs was third at 182.519mph; Ross Chastain, fourth at 182.402mph and Carson Hocevar completed the top five at 182.315 mph.

Bubba Wallace was sixth at 182.156mph; Zane Smith, seventh at 182.057mph; Ricky Stenhouse Jr., eighth at 182.05 mph; Kyle Larson (P), ninth at 181.941mph and Alex Bowman rounded out the top 10 at 181.861mph.

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Larson is the defending South Point 400 race winner.

William Byron (P) was 11th fastest at 181.781mph; Christopher Bell (P), 13th at 181.702mph; Denny Hamlin (P), 18th at 181.427mph and Chase Elliott (P) was 20th at 181.269mph.

Joey Logano (P) was 30th fastest at 179.892mph, and Blaney was the slowest playoff driver, having only completed one lap. The left rear tire on Blaney’s car went down because of a puncture in Turn 1, which spun his Ford Mustang around and sent it into the outside wall with contact on the driver’s side.

Blaney will be in a backup car for Sunday’s race. He was the only incident in practice.

Martin Truex Jr. was fastest in the best 10 consecutive lap average. It was Truex over Reddick, Chastain, Elliott, and Larson.

There are 37 drivers entered in Sunday’s race.

(P) denotes Playoff driver

Hard work at Charlotte Roval pays off for Reddick and 23XI

Tyler Reddick wouldn’t say Sunday was the drive of his career, but he acknowledged he certainly had to fight to make the next round of the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs. Reddick advanced by four points over Joey Logano. But the regular season champion …

Tyler Reddick wouldn’t say Sunday was the drive of his career, but he acknowledged he certainly had to fight to make the next round of the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs.

Reddick advanced by four points over Joey Logano. But the regular season champion wound up having a dramatic day at the Charlotte Roval after colliding with his boss, Denny Hamlin, going into Turn 7 on lap 31 when the field stacked up behind a spinning Austin Dillon. Reddick was hot on the brakes when his car hit the left side of Hamlin’s and went airborne.

The incident damaged the toe link of his Toyota. Reddick fell to 37th place after initially pitting and the rest of the afternoon saw more pit stops for repairs, having to drive through the field.

“I’m hurtin’ now,” Reddick said. “I got pretty airborne, right? It felt pretty crazy. My neck is probably a little sore, but there are a lot of good curbs you can go out there and jump; I was having to get aggressive and try to find speed. The car was still pretty good but it took all the repair work that everyone put in to finally get it somewhat drivable again.

“It was definitely a lot different from what we had in the beginning of the race. I think the track would have really come to what our car was in Stage 1, but just to get it back to where we were and be able to make passes was a good effort.”

Reddick had been 14 points to the good entering the day, but after winning the first stage (which gave him 10 more), the incident in the second stage kept him out of the points. Logano earned 17 points between the first two stages.

“I’m behind [Martin Truex Jr.] and I can’t see much,” Reddick said of what happened in Turn 7. “I was just trying to get to the inside of [Truex], and I get inside [him] and my eyes open up more. I can see the apex of the corner. The [No.] 3 is spun around and everybody is on the brakes stopping.

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“You’re expecting everyone to take that corner somewhat normally but as soon as I could see what was happening ahead, everyone was hitting the brakes and stopping to avoid a spin. It was the wrong place at the wrong time for us.”

In the final stage, Reddick was mathematically below the cutline as the points were updated in real-time. However, the final caution with 29 laps to go allowed him to come to pit road for fresh tires.

He restarted 26th as Logano ran sixth. Then the march began.

Reddick was 24th with 25 laps to go and Logano was fifth. He was 23rd with 24 laps to go, 22nd with 23 laps to go, 21st with 22 laps to go and Logano was still fifth. The No. 45 was then 20th with 21 laps to go and Logano lost a spot, dropping to sixth.

With 20 laps to go, Reddick was 19th. At 18 laps to go, he was 17th (and the gap was then down to four points). He took 15th on the next lap, narrowing the gap to two points. Four laps later, he shrunk that gap to just one point by taking 14th.

At 11 to go, Reddick held station and Logano lost another spot, dropping to seventh, tying the two on the cutline. With nine to go, Reddick was 12th, giving him a two-point advantage. In two more laps, he picked up a further point on Logano when he took 11th place.

Logano then lost a further spot before the checkered flag, putting the final points gap at four.

“With how my car was driving before that pit stop, I was a bit unsure,” Reddick said of getting back through the field. “But we kept making adjustments to the car.”

“Days of Thunder” moment was good fortune for Reddick

Tyler Reddick went through a movie scene at Talladega Superspeedway but emerged with his NASCAR Cup Series playoff hopes intact. The regular-season champion faced being out of a transfer spot as the laps wound down Sunday afternoon. It would have …

Tyler Reddick went through a movie scene at Talladega Superspeedway but emerged with his NASCAR Cup Series playoff hopes intact.

The regular-season champion faced being out of a transfer spot as the laps wound down Sunday afternoon. It would have put him in a fight to advance going into the final race of the round, but then came the largest crash in Cup Series history with five laps to go. Reddick was involved in the crash, but his No. 45 Toyota remained on track and he finished 20th – ahead of six of his fellow championship contenders.

“I was in it, for sure,” Reddick said of the crash. “I was spinning around backward, and hit front and back. It felt like some Days of Thunder stuff. It was not fun. It was a lot of wrecked cars.”

Reddick was approximately five points below the cutline before the crash, yet left Talladega with an advantage of 14 points.

“That was [a change in fortune],” he admitted. “I didn’t know where we were when that happened at first, but to see it turn out the way it did was a good thing. If we can take a 20th place finish and gain on the cut, I think you take that every time.”

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Sunday was not Reddick’s best showing, as he earned only five stage points and averaged an 18th-place running position. But that has been the theme of the postseason for his 23XI Racing team. After finishing sixth in the opener at Atlanta Motor Speedway, Reddick finished 20th or worse in the last four races.

It led to him admitting to the concern in his camp before arriving at Talladega. The speed he showed late in the regular season hasn’t been there, nor has the team executed well, but he’s still above the cutline, and Reddick feels confident he’ll control his destiny at the Charlotte road course.

“The last time we really showed up with any kind of speed was a road course,” Reddick said. “I know at Watkins Glen it really went off the rails. The surface [at Charlotte] isn’t changing, the tires aren’t changing, and those are all knowns that we’ve raced on and had good speed on. The last time we ran on this tire that we’re taking to the Roval was Sonoma, and we ran up front for a majority of that race.

“I feel good about it. The changes to the course — typically, anytime something changes on any type of track, it helps me, I feel like. It levels the field a little bit. It should be good for us.”

Reddick and team concerned as performance continues to dip

Tyler Reddick and his 23XI Racing team are looking for answers. The NASCAR Cup Series regular season champion has not shown the same form thus far in the postseason. Reddick has an average finish of 19.5 through the first four races with one top-10 …

Tyler Reddick and his 23XI Racing team are looking for answers.

The NASCAR Cup Series regular season champion has not shown the same form thus far in the postseason. Reddick has an average finish of 19.5 through the first four races with one top-10 finish and 21 stage points. Last Sunday, he was an also-ran at Kansas Speedway — where he won last year — taking a 25th-place finish.

“[We’re] definitely concerned,” Reddick said in response to a question from RACER. “What got us to winning the regular season championship is car performance — with that good handling as well. They’re kind of hand in hand; you do have weekends where you have fast race car but it’s not going to handle as good. But for us, we’ve just been lacking performance and a good-handling car.”

A sixth-place finish at Atlanta Motor Speedway is Reddick’s best in the postseason. He has not earned a top five since winning at Michigan International Speedway (Aug. 18), which is also the last time he led a double-digit number of laps in a Cup Series race.

“Yeah, at this point it’s definitely a headscratcher,” Reddick continued. “I feel like all of us coming off of the regular season, I felt no emphasis change what I was doing. I don’t think anyone on this team has either. We just haven’t been putting together good races. We haven’t had speed; we haven’t been able to get stage points.

“It’s been tough.”

Kansas Speedway was one of the biggest surprises for Reddick. Not only was he the defending winner at the speedway, but Reddick has excelled on intermediate racetracks. He qualified fourth for Sunday’s race, but averaged a 12th place running position and only led laps through a green flag pit cycle.

“You look at Kansas — we did run the right-side shark fin and while I feel like a lot of folks on the NASCAR side felt it wasn’t going to change the characteristic of how the car drives, it was a massive swing in how the car reacts to sliding,” Reddick said. “I thought I was driving a Gen 6 car again this past Sunday because you could slide it so much farther than you could before. Typically, with this car, if you get sideways, you’re wrecking and spinning out. But you could slide it and just continue to slide it. So, I don’t know if that’s part of it.

“I think on our end we understood it was going to be a decent change to the car but we qualified OK, we started the race off with decent speed and knew balance migration was going to be a struggle. It was bad for a lot of the Toyotas but it was really on the extreme side for us. So, nothing [we] really can point our fingers at, to be honest.”

Reddick entered the postseason with 28 playoff points as the No. 3 seed. He went from 20 points above the cutline before Kansas Speedway to four points below the cutline, the first driver out of a transfer spot, after the race. The series heads to Talladega Superspeedway this weekend, where Reddick won in the spring.

Reddick paces Watkins Glen Cup practice

Regular season champion Tyler Reddick led the way in an extended NASCAR Cup Series practice from Watkins Glen International. Reddck laid down a quick time of 72.018 seconds (122.469 mph) early in the opening session for Group A. Given this weekend’s …

Regular season champion Tyler Reddick led the way in an extended NASCAR Cup Series practice from Watkins Glen International.

Reddck laid down a quick time of 72.018 seconds (122.469 mph) early in the opening session for Group A. Given this weekend’s tire falloff, that time stood as the quickest for the full 80 minutes of practice.

Ross Chastain was second fastest at 122.337mph. Kyle Larson followed at 122.296mph, with Shane van Gisbergen (122.267mph) and Denny Hamlin (122.015mph) capping off the top five. Joey Logano (121.963mph), Austin Cindric (121.778mph), Ryan Blaney (121.764mph), Corey LaJoie (121.759mph) and Noah Gragson (121.620mph) completed the top 10.

Road courses have been a specialty for Reddick, who earned his two wins at Road America and on Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s road course in 2022. The 23XI Racing ace entered the weekend third in the playoff standings, 12 points behind points leader Blaney. He’ll be one of many drivers looking to end Hendrick Motorsports’ streak of five straight wins at The Glen.

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Cindric was the quickest driver in Group B. He was followed by Kyle Busch, who ended up 12th with a speed of 121.519mph. Playoff newcomer Ty Gibbs (121.280mp.) was third in the group and 17th overall, followed by teammate Martin Truex Jr. (121.219mph) in 18th. Rookie Zane Smith (121.172mph) rounded out the top-five in Group B and ended the session 20th overall.

Other playoff drivers included Brad Keselowski (121.217mph) in 19th, William Byron (121.088 mph) in 21st, Daniel Suarez (121.037mph) in 24th, Christopher Bell (120.855mph) in 25th, Alex Bowman (120.73mph) in 28th and Harrison Burton (120.595mph) in 30th.

Multi-disciplinary motorsports star Juan Pablo Montoya completed his first practice run in the Next Gen car to kick off a one-off run with 23XI Racing. The 2010 Watkin Glen winner ended the session in 15th, with a speed of 121.362mph.

Drivers were given extra practice time to test the new tire brought by Goodyear, which was anticipated to yield significant falloff. Each practice group was offered two 20-minute sessions. Reddick ran 16 laps and saw a difference of 2.568 seconds from his best lap to his final one in the opening session. Cindric fell off 3.061 seconds over his 15 laps in group B.

Both groups saw a lone incident in their opening sessions. Hamlin looped his No. 11 Toyota around at the entrance to Turn 1 in Group A, while Busch lost control of his No. 8 Chevrolet after crossing over the curbing at the exit of the Bus Stop. Neither driver hit anything or sustained damage in the accidents.

AJ Allmendinger went off-track through the esses just as the final practice session wrapped up.

Qualifying is up next.

Reddick not feeling title pressure despite regular season championship win

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. …

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.

Reddick fights through illness to win regular-season championship

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 …

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.”