HENDERSON, Ky. (WEHT) — With the NASCAR regular season coming to a close, the race is on for playoff position. Last year a crucial win at the Indy Motor Speedway helped Tyler Reddick secure a solid, starting playoff spot when the round of 16 arrived, and another win this year could do the same thing.
Part of the reason Reddick has found so much success this season is his new team 23XI. Since joining Michael Jordan and Denny Hamlin’s team this season, and hopping in a Toyota, the 45 car has nine top-10 finishes, six top-5 finishes and one win.
“Well, one thing we’ve certainly had is a lot of a lot of speed in our Toyota Camry, TRD’S,” Reddick said. “It’s just been a frustrating year for sure. We’ve we’ve we’ve we’ve won a race which is very good for our team. It’s got us locked in the playoffs. Now, this as we really approach, you know, the playoffs starting here in a few weeks. But for us, we’ve been having to really work on cleaning up the stakes. Just just even yesterday, you know, we had the league coming off pit road and had a crucial mistake on the pit stop and pretty much ended our day. So we just got to clean the stakes up. We’ve honestly been in contention when more races this year than than I did last year. And we just haven’t capitalized on them. So we’ll do everything we can to clean that up and it would be great to go on to Indian and have a smooth, smoother race and get back on track.”
Tyler Reddick has run exceptionally well on road courses in his career so, far, which is certainly a strong suit for the young driver.
“Well, I think with the nature of road course racing, it’s something that in years past that the NASCAR drivers haven’t done a lot of,” Reddick said. “And certainly, you know, for the tail end of the gen-six car rolling into the next-gen car we just saw more and more road course dates pop up on our calendar year. And I’m just really focused on getting better as a road course driver. Really it was one of my worst racetrack types a couple of years ago, so we just worked really hard at it over the years and it’s been great to see the the gain in performance. You know, it went from my least favorite type of events of the year to my most favorite for sure.”
As the defending champion of last year’s Brickyard 200, and with a couple of more road courses to race at in Indy and Watkins Glen, Reddick is looking to bounce back from last weekend’s pit issues and get back in the winner’s column.
“It’s a brand new week,” Reddick said. “You know, we we got to go through the same steps that we did last week to get to to where we were. So we just reset, keep the same mindset. You know, we we’re doing a really good job of putting ourselves in position to win races. We’ve just got to do the easy part. We’ve just got to you’ve just got to see it through to the end. You know, a lot of the hard work is showing up to the racetrack with a fast car, putting ourselves in position to win races. We’re doing all that. It’s really just the little things that, you know, we’re we’re going to be able to clean up for sure. So excited to get to Indy where it’s a race that, you know, we should have a lot of pace. Do you expect a lot of green flag running? So, you know, practice and qualifying on Saturday will be really important. If we can put ourselves in the top four or five, it’ll give us great pit stops selection. And also if we can just sit on the pole, it will put us right where we need to be right from the get go. So we’ll try and do that again this year and see how it goes.”
The Verizon 200 at the Brickyard begins at 1:30 CT/2:30 ET on Sunday, August 13 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
