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Tyler Reddick is one of the dark horses to win Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Homestead-Miami Speedway. He just hopes he doesn’t make the kind of embarrassing mistake that nearly cost him a top-five finish there last year.
Tyler Reddick, who is in his second season with Richard Childress Racing, won two Xfinity Series races at Homestead, and both of them helped him clinch the Xfinity Series championship. He also finished fourth in the Cup Series race at Homestead as a rookie.
But it is last year’s Cup race that still sticks in his mind, but for all the wrong reasons. Tyler Reddick was running fourth and gaining on third-place Ryan Blaney and runner-up Chase Elliott when he slowed down on the white-flag lap, thinking the race was over. As Reddick slowed, his crew yelled, “Keep going, keep going. … It’s the last lap, dawg, go, go!”
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Tyler Reddick is still embarrassed by the moment of brain-fade.
“Yeah, it kind of stinks,” Tyler Reddick said on a Zoom calls with reporters Friday. “We got very fortunate, though, that it didn’t cost me any spots. But definitely the move that I set-up on Blaney in what I thought was the final lap in (Turns) 3 and 4, I would have waited one more lap and got a little bit closer and maybe I could have gotten third out of it. Maybe I could have taken advantage of him and Chase racing and pass them both, who knows? I didn’t lose any spots, but yeah, it kind of was an unfortunate misunderstanding.”
Tyler Reddick, 25, is considered one of the top young drivers in the sport. He won nine races in the NASCAR Xfinity Series. He won the 2018 Xfinity Series championship with Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s JR Motorsports, and then won it again in 2019 with RCR. In his first season in the Cup Series, he finished 19th in the standings with three top-five and nine top-10 finishes.
Though he’s struggled a bit in the Cup series, it’s mental mistakes like last year’s gaffe at Homestead that troubles Tyler Reddick most. He made a similar mistake in the Xfinity Series, costing him a stage win.
“So yeah, it’s embarrassing when you do stuff like that, but fortunately I didn’t lose a spot and it could have been a lot worse,” he said. “I could have pulled down pit road and finished last on the lead lap.”
Tyler Reddick attributes such mistakes to the transition from small, short-track racing to longer, more challenging events in NASCAR’s national touring series.
“Sometimes I think I hear things I don’t and that was the case (at Homestead),” Tyler Reddick said. “(My crew) was just saying it was one heck of a night and everyone did a good job and bring it back in one piece. So I thought, okay, the race is over; but obviously that was not the case. And then when I keyed up, I talked so long that everyone was trying to scream at me to ‘go, go, go.’ I wouldn’t shut up. I didn’t hear him until I let go of the button on the steering wheel there.”
Tyler Reddick expected to contend at Homestead
Tyler Reddick is “extremely” excited about returning to Homestead on Sunday. Given his record there, he is considered a driver who could produce an upset like Michael McDowell in the Daytona 500 and Christopher Bell on the Daytona Road Course.
Tyler Reddick also has to be careful, however, because he can’t afford another bad finish after a rough start to the 2021 season. He was involved in wrecks in both races, finishing 27th in the Daytona 500 and 39th on the Daytona Road Course. He is mired in 34th in the NASCAR Cup Series standings after two races.
“Unfortunately, because of how bad of a start we’ve had, we really can’t go for broke,” Tyler Reddick said. “We can’t be aggressive because the first two races I think we’ve pretty much gotten like two points or something like that. … (We) are in a really bad spot right now in points, And we just can’t let this slide continue because if it goes on much further, we’re going to be in a deeper hole three races in … And that’s no way to start what’s supposed to be an improvement on my rough year.”
Still, Tyler Reddick is confident at Homestead after his recent success there.
“I’ve been very fortunate to have some great vehicles at Homestead-Miami Speedway, whether it be in the trucks, Xfinity or Cup cars, so that helps a lot with just overall confidence and feeling comfortable there,” he said. “Going there with such strong cars really has allowed me to play into my strengths around that track.”
Tyler Reddick, who will also run the Xfinity race at Homestead, is one of a handful of young drivers known for running the high line, right up against the wall, at fast tracks like Homestead. He believes the worn-out, 1.5-mile track suits his driving style.
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“Homestead-Miami Speedway is a place where you can move around and change up your line almost every lap to find more speed,” Tyler Reddick said. “So, I think just having a feel for that, the tire fall-off there, and how much you can move around suits my driving style. It’s just something that came rather quickly to me from the start. … We need to go into the race on Sunday with that confidence and just maintain it during the entire day in order to hopefully get our No. 8 Chevrolet into victory lane.”
