Stat: For the first time since 1987, a driver has won five of the first nine races, and the last driver to do it was Dale Earnhardt.
This time, it’s Tyler Reddick and the 23XI Racing No. 45.
“Yeah, that’s a guy on the Mount Rushmore of NASCAR drivers,” Reddick said after winning the AdventHealth 400. “To be able to accomplish things that someone like him did is truly incredible but none of it’s possible without the good men and women at 23XI — the ones that travel, the one back at Airspeed.”
Humble and understated
Listen, no one in good faith is going to suggest Reddick is The Intimidator but there was an element of Ironhead to how this race was won on Sunday afternoon. There was a refuse to lose from the entire 45 team.
Specifically, this race was lost twice and yet they won. Reddick passed team owner but rival driver Denny Hamlin over the course of the final long green flag run but then a fuel pickup issue led to contact with the wall and giving the lead right back up.
Then, on a restart against Hamlin, Kyle Larson and Christopher Bell, Reddick was aggressive. He objectively walled Bell and lost a second to Larson but drove back around him over the next lap and a half anyway.
It was a little messy, but that’s kind of what Cup overtimes at Kansas have been in the NextGen era, and Reddick showed crew chief Billy Scott something along the way.
“I just told him to refocus, take a deep breath and start over,” Scott said. “We’re still on the front row, a great place to be. We kind of anticipated what might happen with (Larson). Historically gone three-wide on the bottom with a good restart. I knew (Bell) was one of the best at getting to the outside to our right rear. Both of those things happened.
“Four of the best in the series up there battling. Any one of them could have come out on top. It worked out perfectly. Again, he put himself in the exact right spot to make it happen.”
Tyler Reddick, 23XI Racing
Photo by: Sean Gardner / Getty Images
And he’s doing it a lot right now, winning 56 percent of all Cup Series races through nine starts, unheard of in the spec car era that was supposed to signal an impossibility for a driver to reach 10 wins in a single season again.
“Nice,” Reddick said.
The win also gives Reddick a 100-point championship lead again, which isn’t insurmountable for the regular season, but certainly gives him a tremendous likelihood of a top-four seed once the Chase for the Championship begins with the Southern 500.
“Very nice,” Reddick said.
Remember, 69 percent of simulated championship runs were won from a top-four starting position over the winter, and Reddick has placed himself in position to reach that precipice come November.
“Thanks for putting it that way,” Reddick said with a laugh.
“Yeah, I mean, it’s early,” Reddick said. “I mean, we saw today the 11 is strong. I know the 20 is strong, as well. The 5, he finds ways to get more speed out of his cars when it seems like handling is lacking a bit. There’s a lot of really good teams, a lot of good pit crews, a lot of good minds in this garage.
“Certainly over these next 17 races, the ones that are missing it a little bit here and there are going to start hitting it. I think the competition will certainly continue to tighten up as we get through this year. We’ve done a really good job of making the most of our days and scoring a lot of points.”
And once the Chase begins, the most Reddick could start with is a 25-point lead, or a 25 point deficit, or a 30 point deficit, but those seem to be the most likely options and that’s not a bad place regardless.
“Yeah, we’ll see when we get to the Chase, right,” he said. “It’s going to get reset and everyone’s going to get the points that they’ve earned. We’ll go from there.
“We’ll just try and get as comfortable a lead as possible. If we can maintain a gap like this as we get further into the season, hopefully it puts us in position to try and steal some more wins if it’s split strategy calls middle of the race or late in the race.”
Regardless of what happens in the fall, it’s not often that Reddick can put his name next to Dale Earnhardt in some tangible way, and that will be the lasting memory of the AdventHealth 400 at Kansas Speedway.
Tyler Reddick, 23XI Racing
Photo by: David Jensen / Getty Images
“It’s really unreal,” he said.
“It’s definitely going to seem like night and day. Our cars are, you would think, night and day, just night and day that our cars are so much better. I mean, I think we have done a good job of improving our cars at the places we’re already strong, making them better at the places we’re weak.
“More than anything, our mindset, approach, what we’re doing consistently on the preparation side. It’s on a really good place. Weeks like this where I’m not at my best as a driver, whatever it might be, we’re still able to power through the stuff and use that teamwork that we work hard on, whether it was in the off-season or how we go about preparing for each race.
I’m loving that we’re seeing the fruits of that hard work paying off right now.”
Photos from Kansas – Sunday
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