Continue reading with advertising …

… or with a subscription

Visit motorsport.com as usual with advertising and tracking. You can revoke your consent at any time via the data protection page.¹

Use motorsport.com without any advertising banners, personalized tracking and commercials for a small fee.

Accept and continue

More information about advertising and tracking in our Data protection notice, the List of our partners and in Data protection information center.

Already a subscriber?

Log in here

Bob Pockrass

FOX NASCAR Insider

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.

Get more from NASCAR Cup Series Follow your favorites to get information about games, news and more

Christian Horner doubts that Lando Norris would have made it through Turn 4 without going off track in his battle with Max Verstappen in the first of two Mexican Grand Prix incidents that awarded the Dutchman a 10-second penalty.

Norris made a move on the outside of Verstappen at Turn 4 of lap 10 after closing in with DRS, and the two were side-by-side in the apex. Verstappen was then adjudged to have guided Norris wide into the run-off and onto the grass.

This preceded the second incident that lap, where Norris – who was now ahead at this juncture – was pushed off the road by Verstappen at Turn 7 as the Red Bull driver came into the corner hot.

Horner, using print-outs of GPS traces in a session with the media to illustrate his point, believes that Norris braked much later for the corner versus that of his fastest lap later on in the race.

“First of all, I think it was very harsh to give two 10-second penalties,” Horner said. “I think there’s something more fundamental; I mean, obviously there’s been a reaction to last weekend.

“I think it’s very important for the drivers’ stewards and the drivers to sit down. Because [looking at] the GPS, this is on the run down to Turn 4.

“This is actually Lando versus Lando. In Lando’s fastest lap of the Grand Prix, the point that he’s braking for Turn 4 and then obviously executing the corner.

“On the lap that he has the incident with Max — he is 15 kilometres an hour faster and later on the brakes than his fastest lap of the grand prix.

“He wouldn’t have made the corner, he would have run off track. You can see from his onboard steering. Of course, at this point in the race, he’s got probably 80kg more fuel than at the point that he’s done his fastest lap.

Christian Horner, Red Bull Racing

Photo by: Erwin Jaeggi

“It used to be a reward of the bravest to go around the outside. I think we’re in danger of flipping the overtaking laws upside down, where drivers will just try to get their nose ahead at the at the apex, and then claim that they have to be given room on the exit.

“You can see quite clearly, he’s effectively come off the brakes, gone in super late to try and win that argument, as far as the way these regulations are written, and then at that point, you’re penalised.”

Horner says the follow-up incident was a more understandable penalty, suggesting that Verstappen was expecting Norris to give up the place and ultimately became frustrated that his championship rival hadn’t done so.

He added that it was important that F1’s rulemakers reiterated the importance of having the inside line, and called upon them to avoid “over-complicating” the racing guidelines.

“I think the Turn 7 incident is different. I think Max was expecting Lando to give up the pace, he’s obviously gone up the inside there, and they’ve both run wide.

“I can understand effectively forcing the car wide there why there would be a penalty applicable to that.

“But I think that was the frustration of potentially Lando not giving back the place from this incident here. So these things, you know, they only escalate.

“I just think maybe we’re over-complicating things. And when you have to revert to an instruction manual of an overtake…

“I mean, the racing principles for years have been, if you have the inside line, you dictate the corner.

“And I think the way the regulations or the guidelines have evolved is encouraging a driver to have his nose ahead at the apex, irrelevant of whether you’re going to make the corner.”

Continue reading with advertising …

… or with a subscription

Visit motorsport.com as usual with advertising and tracking. You can revoke your consent at any time via the data protection page.¹

Use motorsport.com without any advertising banners, personalized tracking and commercials for a small fee.

Accept and continue

More information about advertising and tracking in our Data protection notice, the List of our partners and in Data protection information center.

Already a subscriber?

Log in here

Continue reading with advertising …

… or with a subscription

Visit motorsport.com as usual with advertising and tracking. You can revoke your consent at any time via the data protection page.¹

Use motorsport.com without any advertising banners, personalized tracking and commercials for a small fee.

Accept and continue

More information about advertising and tracking in our Data protection notice, the List of our partners and in Data protection information center.

Already a subscriber?

Log in here

Max Verstappen says the lack of race pace in his Red Bull Formula 1 car was the main factor in his incidents with Lando Norris at the Mexican Grand Prix, which led him to serve 20 seconds’ worth of penalties.

Verstappen ran Norris off the road twice on lap 10 at Turn 4 and Turn 7, repassing the McLaren driver off-track in the meantime and earning a 10-second penalty for each incident.

These were served in Verstappen’s pitstop, which put him back on track in 15th; although he recovered to sixth, he could make no inroads into the two Mercedes ahead and was being closed down by Kevin Magnussen and Oscar Piastri.

Verstappen was more bothered by the lack of pace he had in the 71-lap race at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, suggesting that this led him to being ‘put in those positions’ for a penalty.

“You know, honestly, 20 seconds is a lot, but I’m not going to cry about it and I’m also not going to share my opinion,” Verstappen explained.

“The biggest problem that I have is that today was a bad day in terms of race pace. That was quite clear again on the mediums and on the hard tyres. 

“I just felt that the Turn 4 [penalty] was a bit more of, like, a question mark. Turn 7 is what it is.

“Honestly, those two things are also not my problem. The problem is that we are too slow, and that’s why I’m being put in those kind of positions. That is my problem.”

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB20

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

Reflecting on his race, Verstappen felt that he had very little grip on the hard tyre and suffered further struggles with getting his brakes to bite – thus costing time to the Mercedes duo.

He remained curt when discussing the implications of the racing guidelines, feeling that it was simply hard racing and that it was up to him to drive as he saw fit.

“I mean, to get back to sixth was alright, but then I couldn’t even fight the Mercedes cars in front. I just had no grip, I was just sliding a lot, I couldn’t brake. So yeah, it was a very tough one. 

“We’re trying [to improve], but I mean, also it was more promising. Here again, it was a bit more tough, so it’s a bit odd. But a few things to look at, and hopefully, of course, Brazil, we can be more competitive. 

“[Lando and I] didn’t touch. So, just racing hard. But at the end of the day, everyone speaks for themselves [in the drivers’ briefing]. 

“Of course, can the rules be better? Maybe yes, maybe not. It’s always the same thing. I mean, I just drive how I think I have to drive. Last week that was all right, this week, 20-second penalty. That’s what it is. Life goes on, you know.”

“[The lead is] still 47 points. Hopefully we can just be a little bit more competitive.”