HOMESTEAD, Fla. — It is hard to forget having a flip in a race car, but Tyler Reddick swears he put his from last week out of his mind.
Just seven days after an aggressive move went awry and his car flipped in the Las Vegas grass, Reddick made another aggressive move — this time to perfection — to capture the NASCAR Cup Series playoff race at Homestead-Miami Speedway and vault him into a spot in the Championship 4.
Reddick, on slightly older tires, made a move from up against the wall to pass Ryan Blaney — who one lap earlier had passed Denny Hamlin for the top spot — in the final turns for the win.
“I was very fortunate that I was left the top [lane] at my favorite track, my favorite corner,” Reddick said. “I Just took a risk, and it paid off.
” I don’t know what else really to say.”
The 23XI Racing driver entered the race 30 points below the cutline but with the victory (and the automatic bid that goes with it), joins Vegas winner Joey Logano to be among the four drivers who will compete for the Cup title Nov. 10 at Phoenix. The two remaining spots will be filled next Sunday at Martinsville Speedway.
Reddick, whose team is co-owned by driver Denny Hamlin and basketball icon Michael Jordan, didn’t seem to have any problem forgetting his woes of a week earlier to take a tongue-out GOAT-like shot for the win.
“We’re kind of crazy to some degree,” Reddick said about the racer’s mentality. “My first lap in the car after flipping it, I drive off into Turn 3 and 4 in practice right on the wall, like nothing had ever happened.
“That’s just how you have to be if you want to compete at this level. You’ve got to be able to remember the important things, remember the lessons. There’s certain things you just got to completely block out, forget, go into the next day, the next week completely ready to go like nothing ever happened.”
Takeaways after an incredible race on the 1.5-mile track, which has a unique profile in that its banking near the walls is great than near the apron, which gives drivers multiple options of preferred racing lanes.
Larson Nearly Rallies
Kyle Larson rallied from a flat tire early in the race to challenge for the lead … until a move unraveled his winning hopes with 12 laps remaining.
Larson tried to squeeze between leader Ryan Blaney on the inside and Austin Dillon on the outside, had slight contact with Blaney and then spun off of Dillon.
“I’m proud of my effort,” Larson said. “I’m just bummed that it didn’t work out. Austin did nothing wrong. I was hoping he would see me coming and give me the top knowing I was running there. But he didn’t. He kept running his line.
“There was a little bit of a hole and I thought that might be my opportunity to win.”
Winding up 13th, Larson sits seven points behind his Hendrick teammate William Byron and 29 points behind Christopher Bell as they potentially will vie for one (possibly two) Championship 4 spots on points if they don’t win at Martinsville.
With such a tight points battle, Larson felt he had to take a risk to win the race.
“You just don’t know if you’re going to have another chance,” Larson said. “That was as close as I had gotten to him and felt like I had to make the move. … I don’t think I did anything wrong. There was a gap and I was going to try to take it.”
Close But Still Big Holes
Blaney led 47 laps and finished second. Denny Hamlin, who took the lead with seven laps to go before relinquishing it to Blaney with laps remaining, wound up third. Chase Elliott led 81 laps but finished fifth.
Those all sound like solid days, but all three left Homestead wondering what could have been. They all are far below the cutline — Hamlin by 18 points, Blaney by 38 and Elliott by 43 — that they pretty much face must-wins at Martinsville (Hamlin still has an outside shot on points).
“Controlling the race with two to go, you’ve got to try to find a way to finish it,” Hamlin said. “I just didn’t.”
Blaney probably felt a little bit the same way but didn’t see Reddick’s move coming.
“He had this huge run down the backstretch and the 11 [of Hamlin] was kind of on him and when he got right to me, it was just perfect timing for him and worse for me,” Blaney said. “He got to me right as the corner started. … I sent it in there two lanes off the top kind of fast to try to protect that and get up [into the upper groove].
“But he entered [Turn] 3 so fast at the wall. I don’t know how he did it. It was pretty impressive. I thought I had a decent plan, but it didn’t work out.”
Elliott’s car seemed to lose a little bit of strength late in the race.
“When the pace got quicker and everyone started pushing, I didn’t really have anything left to push,” he said.
Still Too The Good
Bell (fourth) and Byron (sixth) didn’t have race-winning pace but had top-5 pace and appeared to make the most of what they had to stay above the cutline.
“I just wasn’t as fast as some of the other guys,” Bell said. “I knew it was going to be a battle to get into the final four and it should be. … There were times in the race where I thought I could contend but I couldn’t consistently do it.”
Byron won at Martinsville in the spring.
“We kind of had what we had today,” Byron said. “We weren’t good enough, and we were just trying to get all we could. I feel like a sixth-place finish is good.”
Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.
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