A pair of Toyota teammates locked down the front row for the NASCAR Cup Series elimination race at the Charlotte Roval. Tyler Reddick earned the pole for Sunday’s race with a lap of 102.839mph (81.214s). It’s Reddick’s second pole of the season, …
A pair of Toyota teammates locked down the front row for the NASCAR Cup Series elimination race at the Charlotte Roval.
Tyler Reddick earned the pole for Sunday’s race with a lap of 102.839mph (81.214s). It’s Reddick’s second pole of the season, first on the Roval, and the sixth of his career.
Christopher Bell qualified second at 102.695mph. Bell is the defending race winner.
Daniel Suarez qualified third (102.603mph), Bubba Wallace fourth (102.569mph), Kyle Busch fifth (102.494mph), AJ Allmendinger sixth (102.353mph), Joey Logano seventh (102.203mph) and Chase Elliott eighth (102.200mph).
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Denny Hamlin spun on his qualifying lap in the final round and did not record a lap. Hamlin wheel hopped on the backstretch and the car took a hard hit going over curbing.
The spin also affected Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Ty Gibbs — also on track but unable to post a time as Hamlin’s spin ended the session.
Martin Truex Jr. qualified 11th, Ross Chastain 12th and William Byron 14th. Byron is already locked into the next round of the playoffs.
Ryan Blaney, also locked into the Round of 8, qualified 17th. Brad Keselowski qualified 19th and Chris Buescher 20th.
Following a crash in practice, Kyle Larson did not post a lap. He will be in a backup car and start from the rear of the field.
Kyle Larson will start at the rear of the field in Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series elimination race at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval in a backup car after crashing in practice. He hit the wall coming out of the infield section of the road course and …
Kyle Larson will start at the rear of the field in Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series elimination race at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval in a backup car after crashing in practice.
He hit the wall coming out of the infield section of the road course and onto the oval. The No. 5 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet got loose when making the transition onto the banking and hit the wall with the right front and then the right rear.
The 2021 series champion will not post a qualifying lap as the team makes the change to the backup car. Larson is 15 points above the playoff grid cutline.
“I just got loose entering [Turn] 8 and overcorrected and got the right front into the wall,” Larson said. “It gets bouncy over there, and it stepped out on me.”
Larson, however, wasn’t the only playoff driver to encounter trouble in practice. Christopher Bell was going down the backstretch toward the chicane when the No. 20 Toyota moved to the right and bounced off the wall.
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23XI Racing teammates Bubba Wallace and Tyler Reddick led the practice session. Wallace was fastest at 102.295mph (81.646s), while Reddick was second on the chart at 102.210mph.
Chase Briscoe was third fastest at 102.062mph, Corey LaJoie fourth at 101.983mph and AJ Allmendinger fifth at 101.957mph.
Ty Gibbs was sixth at 101.814mph, Daniel Suarez seventh at 101.725mph, Larson eighth at 101.692mph, Joey Logano ninth at 101.665mph and Chase Elliott 10th at 101.607mph.
The remaining playoff drivers in practice were Ryan Blaney (12th), Denny Hamlin (15th), Bell (17th), Ross Chastain (18th), Martin Truex Jr. (19th), Chris Buescher (20th), Brad Keselowski (21st), Kyle Busch (26th), and William Byron (29th).
The only other incident was Ty Dillon hitting the wall coming off Turn 1, damaging the right side of his Spire Motorsports Chevrolet.
There are 37 drivers entered in the Bank of America Roval 400.
Evaluating Tyler Reddick’s chances of advancing out of the Round of 12 in his first NASCAR playoffs with 23XI Racing.
[autotag]Tyler Reddick[/autotag] had a great Round of 16 that featured a victory in the Hollywood Casino 400 at Kansas Speedway. Even if Reddick didn’t advance with a win, he would’ve easily made the Round of 12 with finishes of second place at Darlington Raceway and 15th place at Bristol Motor Speedway.
The 23XI Racing driver is heating up at the right time as the No. 45 team is also limiting its mistakes on pit road through the first three races. So, how does the Round of 12 stack up for Reddick as he tries to claim his first NASCAR Cup Series title? Let’s take a look at what tracks are coming up over the next three races.
The driver of the No. 45 car will take a three-point advantage to the playoff cut-line and head to Texas Motor Speedway, which has been very kind to him in the past. Reddick won at Texas last season and had a second-place finish in his debut at the venue. Between those races, Reddick had two top-15 finishes too. Toyota should be strong at the venue so it could be another great event for Reddick.
WHAT A RUN TO THE FINISH. Repost to congratulate Tyler Reddick on his WIN at Kansas! pic.twitter.com/Bd4PHV10xQ
Moving on to Talladega, it has not been a place with much success lately. Reddick has a best finish of 16th place in his last four starts with the other three races being 28th place or worse. The 27-year-old driver did have two straight top-10 finishes in the previous two races but nothing recently. Talladega will be the luck of the draw for Reddick this time around.
Finally, the Charlotte ROVAL should represent a very good closing race for the Round of 12. In Reddick’s three starts, he has a best finish of second place and a worst finish of 12th place. Reddick has done a solid job at earning stage points and has shown good speed on road courses this season. As stated above, the 23XI Racing driver should close out the round very well.
Reddick has the speed and past success at the tracks in the Round of 12 to suggest that it could be a very good three-race stretch. The only wild card for him is Talladega, which means Texas needs to be a strong run. Still, Reddick can make the Round of 8 if he enters the Charlotte ROVAL below the playoff cut-line so there should be optimism about his chances.
A victory on Sunday at Kansas Speedway was not only a relief for Tyler Reddick as it locked him into the next round of the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs, but it might have finally eased the pain of last year’s disappointment. Reddick is advancing into …
A victory on Sunday at Kansas Speedway was not only a relief for Tyler Reddick as it locked him into the next round of the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs, but it might have finally eased the pain of last year’s disappointment.
Reddick is advancing into the Round of 12 for the first time in his career. In his previous two postseason appearances, Reddick was left frustrated by early ends to his championship hopes. Both times, it was two points that Reddick missed advancing by.
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“Really, last year was the heartbreaker,” Reddick said. “Two years ago, we just weren’t great, and we went into Bristol and missed it by a couple. But last year, we had those wins, we came to this race … and had a flat while leading and fell out very early. So, we went into Bristol in a bad spot and then got caught up in a wreck.”
Entering the postseason last year, Reddick looked primed for a deep run. Reddick, then driving for Richard Childress Racing, had won two races during the regular season and was seeded eighth. He started the first round with a third-place finish at Darlington Raceway, but a 35th place at Kansas – from the blown tire while leading – put him on the bubble going into the elimination race.
Collected in a multicar crash on lap 277 at Bristol last season, Reddick finished the race but behind those he was racing with for the final transfer spot. He eventually finished 14th in the championship standings.
Reddick began the 2023 postseason in the 10th seed with a win at Circuit of the Americas in March. He finished second at Darlington, which placed him well above the cutline before Sunday’s race.
“I’m sure even if we didn’t win today and finished second or third, we would have had a lot of points to lean on going into Bristol, so that was just the goal all along,” Reddick said. “I want to win races, but we don’t need to take the risks in the first round.
“I think as we keep going along and we get further in, and we don’t have the points to start that some of the cars at the very front of the leaderboard do, we’ll have to get more aggressive. But it was very nice to get five playoff points today and gain a few more as we go on to the next round.”
Bristol has not been one of Reddick’s best racetracks. In four starts on the asphalt, Reddick has one top-10 finish (fourth in 2020). Having a win in his pocket this weekend, Reddick and crew chief Billy Scott said nothing will change for the team aside from trying to bag more points and playoff points.
“I guess nothing really changes,” he said. “We’re going to go into Bristol preparing this week coming up, trying to make our car as fast as possible, for me obviously, but for also trying to get everything we can to help the 23 team [Bubba Wallace] out. Hopefully, we can go in there with a lot of speed and contend.”
Tyler Reddick made a three-wide move in overtime to grab the victory Sunday at Kansas Speedway and advance out of the first round of the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs for the first time in his career. Reddick lined up fifth on the overtime restart in …
Tyler Reddick made a three-wide move in overtime to grab the victory Sunday at Kansas Speedway and advance out of the first round of the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs for the first time in his career.
Reddick lined up fifth on the overtime restart in the Hollywood Casino 400 and took advantage of those on older tires in front of him. Reddick quickly went to third and made the three-wide move on Erik Jones and Joey Logano coming to the white flag.
The pass for the lead and the win was completed into Turn 1 and Reddick drove away. Reddick led two laps in Sunday’s win: the final two.
“Just an outstanding job by this whole 23XI team,” Reddick said. “We had really good pace but couldn’t get ahead of Denny [Hamlin] there. But chaos ensued; people stayed out, some took two tires, and the bottom lane opened up. Pretty crazy.”
The victory is Reddick’s second with the No. 45 team at 23XI Racing. It’s his first at Kansas Speedway in nine starts.
Denny Hamlin finished second to the car he co-owns. Hamlin was in firm control of the race — over Reddick — before the final caution flew with seven laps to go when Chris Buescher blew a right-rear tire and hit the wall, bringing the field down pit road. A four-tire call resulted in Hamlin leaving pit road fourth behind the two tires of Jones, Logano and Kyle Busch.
Daniel Suarez, however, stayed out and inherited the race lead. Hamlin chose the outside lane and restarted sixth; he was in the same row as Reddick. However, Hamlin admitted he was lagging on the restart and didn’t get the same jump as Reddick did.
“Four fresh tires and send it in there and slide up,” Reddick said of his move. “Just hats off, as I said, to everybody at 23XI. This Toyota Camry TRD had a lot of pace, and we’ve had a lot of really fast cars with this MoneyLion scheme, and it’s really great to get it back to victory lane.”
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Jones finished third, Kyle Larson finished fourth and Logano finished fifth. Chase Elliott finished sixth, Kyle Busch finished seventh, Christopher Bell finished eighth, Brad Keselowski finished ninth and Alex Bowman was 10th.
Larson won the first stage and Keselowski won the second stage. Larson’s No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet was dominant through the first two stages, leading 99 of the first 165 laps. Larson led the most laps Sunday.
Multiple playoff drivers had trouble in Kansas.
William Byron finished 15th after a spin. Ricky Stenhouse Jr. finished 23rd and had contact with the wall. Michael McDowell got into the back of Austin Cindric to cause a caution in the second stage and struggled with his Front Row Motorsports Ford. McDowell finished 26th.
Buescher finished 27th after the blown tire. He was running 12th at the time.
Bubba Wallace was running second when he blew a right-rear tire and hit the wall. Wallace finished 32nd.
Martin Truex Jr. did not finish the race. Truex was the first driver to make an exit after crashing on lap 4 because of a blown tire.
The four drivers below the playoff grid cutline going into the elimination race at Bristol Motor Speedway are Truex (-7), Wallace (-19), Stenhouse (-22), and McDowell (-40).
There were nine cautions Sunday afternoon. There were 19 lead changes among 10 drivers.
Tyler Reddick was fastest in an eventful NASCAR Cup Series practice session Saturday at Kansas Speedway. Reddick posted a lap of 178.808mph (30.200s), topping the speed chart over William Byron at 177.760mph. Bubba Wallace, the defending winner at …
Tyler Reddick was fastest in an eventful NASCAR Cup Series practice session Saturday at Kansas Speedway.
Reddick posted a lap of 178.808mph (30.200s), topping the speed chart over William Byron at 177.760mph.
Bubba Wallace, the defending winner at Kansas, was third fastest at 177.690mph. Kyle Larson was fourth at 177.620mph and Ryan Blaney was fifth at 177.026mph.
The fastest five drivers in practice were Cup Series playoff contenders.
Ty Gibbs was sixth at 176.719mph, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. seventh at 176.644mph, Martin Truex Jr. eighth at 176.390mph, Erik Jones ninth at 176.298mph and Chase Elliott 10th at 176.263mph.
Other playoff drivers in practice were Denny Hamlin (12th), Kevin Harvick (13th), Ross Chastain (14th), Michael McDowell (17th), Christopher Bell (19th), Chris Buescher (20th), Kyle Busch (21st), Brad Keselowski (25th) and Joey Logano (26th).
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There were three incidents in practice — two for playoff drivers.
After Byron laid down the second-fastest lap, he felt a mechanical issue with his Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet. The No. 24 team will change a broken suspension part.
Busch hit the wall in Turn 4. His No. 8 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet got loose after blowing a right-rear tire, sending him into a spin and making significant contact with the right rear.
Gibbs hit the wall off Turn 2 late in practice. The No. 54 Toyota also blew a right rear tire.
Sheldon Creed was 34th fastest in practice. Creed is making his Cup Series debut with Live Fast Motorsports.
There are 36 drivers entered in the Hollywood Casino 400.
Tyler Reddick was fastest in the best 10 consecutive lap average over Kyle Larson, Ty Gibbs, Martin Truex Jr., and Bubba Wallace.
Tyler Reddick came up one spot short of a Southern 500 victory but a clean night for his 23XI Racing team was a small triumph. “We did what we needed to do here tonight,” Reddick said. “I really wanted to be two for two in South Carolina with UNC …
Tyler Reddick came up one spot short of a Southern 500 victory but a clean night for his 23XI Racing team was a small triumph.
“We did what we needed to do here tonight,” Reddick said. “I really wanted to be two for two in South Carolina with UNC colors, but it just didn’t work out. But it was a night we needed to have and I really enjoyed it. Definitely, when we come back next year, I’m going to be even hungrier to try to win that trophy.”
Reddick’s No. 45 Toyota Camry sported Jordan Brand sponsorship with the baby blue color of UNC, Jordan’s alma mater. Saturday night, UNC beat the South Carolina Gamecocks in the Duke’s Mayo Classic.
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Reddick led 90 laps in the Sunday night race, the second-most of any driver (Denny Hamlin led 177). He also earned 16 stage points by finishing second in Stage 1 (worth nine points) and fourth in Stage 2 (worth seven points).
A potential victory slipped away when Reddick lost control of the race on pit road with less than 60 laps to go. Kyle Larson beat Reddick off pit road to take the lead, and Reddick spent the rest of the race — and two more restarts — chasing the Hendrick Motorsports driver.
“Man, I don’t know, maybe just a little bit longer run,” Reddick said of trying to beat Larson. “It had just gotten short enough to where you didn’t save a whole lot, I don’t think. Kyle and I were pretty close the majority of the day, honestly. He just got ahead of us there, unfortunately, on pit road, but all in all, this is the day that we needed to have.
“I’m really just thankful for the hard work from the pit crew, the team, everyone at the shop. Days like this with a car like this, we haven’t been able to get a second-place finish out of it, so I’m really glad we’re able to do that. We’re sitting pretty good. It was a pretty good points day on top of that as well.”
The top four finishers were separated by less than a second at the finish line. As Reddick chased Larson, he was closely followed by Chris Buescher and William Byron.
“It was a tough balance,” Reddick said. “I wanted to keep pushing to try and get Kyle, but I was just getting so loose. I about wrecked in the middle of (Turns) 1 and 2 a few times. I don’t know, I was either going to catch Kyle or I was going to wreck in the middle of 1 and 2 and finish the last car out — 28th.
“It just didn’t make sense in my head, so we’ll take the second place. Hopefully, one day in the future, we come back and have another shot at the Southern 500.”
Even though a botched pit stop with 43 laps remaining in the FireKeepers Casino 400 at Michigan International Speedway toppled Tyler Reddick down to a 30th-place finish position, the first year 23XI Racing driver remains confident the 23XI Racing …
Even though a botched pit stop with 43 laps remaining in the FireKeepers Casino 400 at Michigan International Speedway toppled Tyler Reddick down to a 30th-place finish position, the first year 23XI Racing driver remains confident the 23XI Racing organization is now in a position to contend on every NASCAR Cup Series weekend.
“This is an organization I believe in and I’m glad that I’m here and we’re building that up now,” said Reddick. “There is a huge plan in place and a lot of growth left in this team. To be where we are at this early as we are still checking boxes and getting things where we want them to be.”
Steve Lauletta, team president for the 23XI Racing organization, says the third-year team, which has four wins — including at Circuit of The Americas earlier this year with Reddick — and two poles to its name still has a way to go to reach its goals, despite having both Reddick and teammate Bubba Wallace currently in the top 15 with the playoffs looming.
“We still have a lot of work to get done,” said Lauletta. “I try to remind everybody that we’re only two years and a little more than two and a half seasons into our lifespan and we’re racing against teams that have been doing it for decades and we are holding our own. We’re showing up every week with really fast cars. We’re competitive. We’ve knocked four wins off. We’ve got the No. 45 (Reddick) in the playoffs and the No. 23 (Wallace) fighting to make it and if we got both cars into the playoffs in the third season, that was a goal we set out before the year started. So yeah, we talk about acting as one team and everybody believes that the people that we have and the processes that we’re putting in place and our approach is one that s going to lend to a lot of success.”
Lauletta is aware that the 23XIRacing effort is still a work in progress.
“This is the first year that we have our own pit crew. So we’re in our third season in total and our first season with a pit crew and there are growing pains in all of it still,” he noted. “We’ve got a new shop under construction, so we still operate out of a facility that wasn’t ours and wasn’t designed for us. We are just kind of making the best of it because we only had four and a half months to have ourselves ready to race in 2021, so all of those things are part of the building process of a new race team.”
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Reddick and Wallace have both praised the team’s consistency and preparation, which Lauletta says is key part of the mental game ahead of the run for the playoffs.
“It does say a lot,” said Lauletta. “I mean, it’s certainly the start of it. It’s a lot easier to work on the things that can happen during a race, which we’ve obviously not flawlessly executed this year. We’ve had the chance to be competing for some wins and for a multitude of different reasons, we haven’t been able to knock those down. It’s easier to focus on how to fix executional issues than it is to find speed in race cars and we’re lucky and happy that we do show up with cars that can compete. Now we’ve just got to work on all the other things that go into running up front all day and ultimately winning a race. That’s really our focus.
“There are a million things that have to be done both as you prepare to go to the racetrack each week, figure out what you need to do back at the shop, what you do with your employees and what we do with our partners. There are so many facets to this business and that is what makes it fun, because there is a lot to really get aligned to have an organization functioning at the highest level. The people at 23XI Racing are fantastic. They work really hard. They enjoy being a part of the same team. Now we just need to work really hard the next three weeks to get Bubba locked into the playoffs and then put our heads down for 10 strong races in the playoffs.
“There are three races to go and anything can happen, so I would be much happier if we had a win for each team and we’d be locked in, but we’re not there just yet and we’re in a position that we can still make it into the playoffs with the number 23 and Bubba, which he hasn’t done before in his Cup career. That would be a big step forward for our team and for him as a driver. He did a great job for us in the number 45 last year in fighting for the Owner’s Championship. Getting both cars s the playoffs is a goal that we set out before the season and we’re confident that we can still get there.”
Having worked at Chip Ganassi Racing for over a decade before migrating over to 23XI Racing three years ago, Lauletta has been adamant about 23XI Racing’s aim to be a brand, as opposed to strictly a stock car racing team. Race sponsorships with brands such as Monster Energy, Dr. Pepper, Columbia, McDonald’s and Rocket League have all festooned the team’s race cars in addition to bringing new brand attention to the sport.
Expanding the 23XI brand with Kamui Kobayashi (middle) joining Reddick and Wallace, Lesley Ann Miller/Motorsport Images
“We’re trying to do some things that help us expose the sport of NASCAR and our team 23XI Racing to a wider audience. We want as many core NASCAR fans to cheer for us, but we also want to reach out and bring new fans to the sport and that’s what the Rocket League initiative was about,” Lauletta explained. “Partnering with Garth Brooks earlier this year was great. West Coast Customs worked with us, Travis Pastrana and Kamui Kobayashi and the No. 67 were about what we are trying to do. You know having these global motorsports superstars coming to NASCAR and driving for us and hopefully having some of their fans wanting to pay attention to 23XI Racing, all of that is part of us building this brand and this team.
“We’ve been lucky to have some great opportunities and we have great partners that bring us a lot of opportunities because of the reach of their brands. That kind of helps us expand or audience and our impact on some things. Toyota asking us if we were interested in running Kamui at a race was something we thought was a great opportunity from a brand-building perspective, but also on the track he’s a superstar with a lot of knowledge in his background that we can learn from. Even though he hasn’t driven these cars before, he’s a master at racing and how can he help Bubba and Tyler as we prepare for this weekend and beyond. He was with us in Chicago. He’s just been a pleasure to have around and that’s all part of this opportunity we are given by having the partners and ownership group that we have.”
23XI Racing was founded and co-owned by Denny Hamlin and NBA legend Michael Jordan, and Lauletta says Hamlin continues to help lead the team forward in his unique role as a team owner for 23 XI while continue to race a Toyota for a different organization.
“He’s great. He’s obviously focused on what he’s doing behind the (Joe Gibbs Racing) No. 11, but when he’s not doing that, he is certainly helping us continue to build this team and to become competitive,” Lauretta said of Hamlin. “He said it was a five-year path to become a championship-caliber organization. We are in year three and we all feel like we are on a trajectory to get there, but there is still a lot of work to do.”
Randall Burnett doesn’t think about his string of success until someone points it out. And why not ask him about being one of the winningest crew chiefs in the NASCAR Cup Series over the last 59 races? Burnett of Richard Childress Racing’s No. 8 …
Randall Burnett doesn’t think about his string of success until someone points it out.
And why not ask him about being one of the winningest crew chiefs in the NASCAR Cup Series over the last 59 races? Burnett of Richard Childress Racing’s No. 8 team is tied with Rudy Fugle of Hendrick Motorsports for the most wins by a crew chief in the series since the start of the 2022 season.
Burnett guided Tyler Reddick to three victories last season, including on the Indianapolis road course where the series returns Sunday (2:30 p.m. ET, NBC). Three more victories have been added with Kyle Busch.
“It’s cool,” Burnett said. “I’m really fortunate and really blessed to be with such a great group of people and to have some success from them.”
The pairing of Burnett and Busch got off to a fast start with a win in Fontana, the second points race of the season. As the regular season winds down, Burnett’s team has solidified its position in the postseason but believes there is still a lot of room for improvement.
“We don’t have the consistency on a weekly basis that I think we need to be a championship team right now,” Burnett said. “We’re working on that, discussing how to do things better to be a little more consistent and working to get our short track package better. Then we’ve got to clean up some execution things and make less mistakes. Make our days less eventful at times. I feel like we’ve had a lot of really good speed at a lot of places but we’ve kind of put ourselves behind the eight ball.
“In the playoffs, you have to be consistent, you have to be able to score stage points, and you have to be able to compete for wins. And we do that but probably not consistently enough at this point.”
Burnett got his first opportunity as a Cup Series crew chief in 2016 with AJ Allmendinger at JTG Daugherty Racing. It was one year and done for Burnett before he moved to Richard Childress Racing where he oversaw Matt Tifft’s program in the Xfinity Series in 2018 and then won a championship in the series with Reddick in 2019.
Childress moved Burnett and Reddick to the Cup Series together in 2020. It makes this the second stint Burnett has had at the Cup Series level, which is proving to be his most successful.
This interview was condensed for brevity and clarity.
Q: Do you feel like you’ve settled into your place again in the Cup Series garage?
RB: Starting on the Cup side with AJ [Allmendinger], I had a lot of hurdles to overcome, a lot of things to learn. I’d been a race engineer for a long time and definitely switching into the crew chief role, it presents its own challenges. It’s more than just when to pit or what springs you want to run in the car. There’s a lot of stuff that goes into it on a weekly basis, and I had to learn my footing on that. So going back to the Xfinity Series for a few years — I’d always been on the Cup side so I really didn’t know much about an Xfinity car when I went to crew chief one. Fortunately, I had some really good people on me when I first got to working on the Xfinity car. We worked through some things and I think it was a good growing experience for myself to go through some of that on Xfinity side, and then to get the chance to do the Cup side in the right circumstance.
Q: The No. 8 team has grown into a race-winning and playoff-contending race team; what is the difference in navigating being a team at the front of the garage?
RB: Just the little things that go a long way, the details that you have to pay attention to. Everybody in this garage is really good and really experienced and they deserve to be in this garage. The competition’s tight. It’s tough. We’ve got a great team that we’ve been building over the past couple of years, and everybody’s all in; everybody’s bought in and pulls the rope in the right direction and does their part. Nobody ever slacks off and it makes my job easier when it goes that way. I respect all these guys on this team. They’re all a bunch of racers. They all grew up racing. Everybody’s got the same mentality as me — if we don’t win, they’re mad about it and they want to figure out why and they want to work harder to figure out why.
Burnett says it’s the little details that have helped RCR’s No. 8 crew grow into regular contenders, but feels the team still has a way to go with race-to-race consistency. Nigel Kinrade/Motorsport Images
Q: In addition to attention to details, what does it take to be a crew chief in this garage.
RB: It’s a seven-day-a-week battle. You get there Monday and you’ve got to grind out, get through all your reports and all your debriefs and go over everything that you learned that weekend and try to see what you can take out of it and apply it to the next weekend. The guys that do that and do it regularly are the ones that excel their teams and get their teams better, and are the ones that are battling for championship at the end of the year.
Q: When a new driver comes joins the team, what kind of an adjustment is it for the crew chief?
RB: The first part of it is getting to know each other, just the nuances of each other how we communicate, how we talk about things. Just learning the little details of when he talks about a car, how loose or tight it is in the race, how big of an adjustment he needs depending on his description of it is. When you are with somebody for a long time, you learn those things, and you know what those things are. So when you have a different driver, a new driver, you kind of have to learn those things over.
Fortunately for us, I feel like that transition went pretty well. Kyle drives his car different from say Tyler did last year, so as far as transferring a lot of the setups over, we’re obviously constantly learning about this car so it’s always evolving, and there are different driving styles. It doesn’t necessarily make it as easy to just plug and play setups that we had success with last year. There’s been a little bit of that a little bit of some challenges to overcome with that. But overall, I think our transition went pretty well. I feel like we’ve worked long enough together now — it’s only been half a half season or whatever, but I feel like it went well, and that we’re getting to know each other a little better and know the things that we need to work on.
Q: Are you getting used to being a consistent Cup Series winning crew chief?
RB: Well, certainly it’s more fun that way. We’ve had a lot of talented drivers the past couple of years. Tyler’s an incredible talent and we hated to see him go, but obviously, we got one of the best ever to do it in our car right now. So, we all feel the pressure of that, knowing that we’d better win some races, and we’re doing everything we can with Kyle’s help He’s been great for RCR and brought some good ideas in and some things that we’ve adapted and I feel like it’s helped us.
Q: What does it mean to be involved in getting a Richard Childress Racing car back into the conversation on a weekly basis?
RB: I think (it’s special). Richard has done so much for the sport in general and he deserves to be on top and obviously went through long years of slumps, just not performing at the level that any of us had hoped. So to be able to help guide that back toward where it should be has been great. There are a lot of people behind the scenes that make that happen and I just get to be a small part of it.
Tyler Reddick reflects on the highs and lows of being a NASCAR Cup driver the day after placing 30th at Michigan International Speedway, a race he very well could have won if not for a wayward pit stop with 43 laps remaining. “That was both all in …
Tyler Reddick reflects on the highs and lows of being a NASCAR Cup driver the day after placing 30th at Michigan International Speedway, a race he very well could have won if not for a wayward pit stop with 43 laps remaining.
“That was both all in one swing,” said the driver of 23XI Racing’s No.45 Toyota. “Practically everyone I’ve talked to, everyone I know, has told me that they waked away from the TV for about five minutes during the Michigan race and everything went all… Yeah, you know what I’m saying. It all went to hell for us.”
Twenty-three races in, Reddick sits 13th in points with one race win, six top fives and nine top 10s. With an average starting position of 10.739 and an average finishing position of 17.522, Reddick is pleased with the speed of his cars, but also frustrated by mistakes and miscues – like the loose rear wheel at Michigan – that have haunted the No. 45 team thus far this racing season.
“Well, honestly, our average finishing position and our average running position, that’s where it gets frustrating,” said Reddick. “I don’t feel like we’ve brought a 15th place car to the racetrack once this year. We’ve been much better than that every single week and we’ve just not capitalized on it. It’s been tough. It’s been frustrating. This last weekend at Michigan was a perfect example of it. The hard part is having the speed. We have the speed, which is awesome. It’s just hard. It’s hard to live with, honestly. It’s tough. It’s hard on everybody when we just continue to not capitalize on the speed that we bring to the racetrack.”
The NASCAR Next Gen car has fostered an incredibly competitive environment throughout this year’s Cup season, and Reddick acknowledged that a team and a driver must execute perfectly to have any hope of winning.
“It really is that way now, and I feel like we’re in a spot with our car’s performance to play it in a way where we don’t have to push it 100 percent to win the races,” he said. “That’s really hard to do, honestly. I think that’s what we’re capable of, and we’ve just got to have some smooth races here. We’ve got three weekends now to go in the right direction. We’ve just got to plug away and we’ve got to have some smooth races and finish where our car is capable of finishing.”
The No.45 team has had plenty of speed this year, but using it effectively has been a problem. Motorsport Images
It was Reddick’s belief in the 23XI Racing organization that drew him to the fold in the first place.
“I saw the process from afar, ” said Reddick who came to 23XI from Richard Childress Racing. “By bringing in Kurt Busch and having Bubba Wallace that first year and starting where they did, and going into this Next Gen platform with Kurt coming on board and bringing in all of the people that they did, they contended right from the get-go. There was a lot of speed out of the cars and over the course of last year, they just continued to get better and better and better. I feel like we’ve picked right back up right where they left off and that climbing is still going.
“We’re just in a tough spot now, collectively, with both teams. We’ve just got to clean up our mistakes. That comes with the higher expectations that we put on ourselves because of the performance that we have. We expect to stay in the top five and contend, so when we don’t capitalize on that, it gets frustrating. But we are still doing the right things. We are still going in the right way.”
Keeping a keen eye on Reddick and company is team co-owner and full-time Cup racer Denny Hamlin. So how has Hamlin been as a team owner?
“Denny has been great,” Reddick said. “He’s a really hands-on owner. He understands things with his owner’s hat on and he understands the driver’s side of it, as well. That’s a unique ownership perspective that really, until recently, we haven’t seen in NASCAR for a long time. A lot of the guys that are owners have been owners for a long time, but that has been many years ago now, so looking at what Denny brings to the table is impressive.
“The people he has worked with as a driver and knowing that those were the people that he wanted to be a part of this team certainly put together a good group. It was really cool to hear from him in how much he wanted me to be a part of this team, and others did too, and how he had a plan for the group. The things that he and Michael [Jordan] have been working on with the whole ownership group made me realize that this is where I wanted to be.
Reddick’s road course form was on point at COTA earlier this year, which offers some encouragement going into IMS this weekend. Nigel Kinrade/Motorsport Images
“It’s frustrating to be sitting here talking about that if we can clean up the mistakes, we can be winning races left and right. But again, this early on in this team’s history, to be doing what we are doing is great. We’re doing a lot of things right and it’s important not to lose sight of that as we really focus on cleaning things up.”
Next up for Reddick and the No. 45 race team will be this weekend’s race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Road Course.
“Indy is a huge opportunity,” said Reddick who is currently ninth in projected playoffs points. “Returning to Indy after winning there one year ago is really is really exciting. It was almost a perfect weekend, really. We were really fast in practice, and we got the pole in qualifying and won the race. We led a lot of laps and had a really strong car. Obviously I’m with a different team and a different manufacturer now, but when I look at what we brought to the Circuit of the Americas earlier in the year, I’m really confident that we’ll do good. At Sonoma this year we had really good speed, but mistakes took us out of that event. At the Chicago street race we were in position to win before I unfortunately made a mistake that I don’t make often. We let some get away for sure, but the speed has been there and I’m going to have a lot of confidence in that when we get there.
“We’ve got to have three smooth races at Indy, Watkins Glen and Daytona before we get started with the playoffs. Like I said before, speed is not our problem. We can’t afford to take ourselves out of it. We’ve just got to have some smooth races. If we can do that, it’ll put us back on the path I feel like we need to be on. It’ll get us in a good mindset as we kick off the playoffs. There are a bunch of tracks that really are good for us in the playoffs. I look at Darlington and we were fast there. Vegas and Kansas, we were fast at those tracks.
“Something we haven’t lost sight of is that as frustrating as this is, something we haven’t lost sight of is how cool it is to do what we do. To be in the mix as much as we are… we’ll just keep using the positives to motivate ourselves and to keep ourselves where we need to be mindset-wise by covering our bases and learning from our mistakes.”
