Hard work at Charlotte Roval pays off for Reddick and 23XI

Yesterday at 07:40 PM

Tyler Reddick wouldn't say Sunday was the drive of his career, but he acknowledged he certainly had to fight to make the next round of the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs.

Reddick advanced by four points over Joey Logano. But the regular season champion wound up having a dramatic day at the Charlotte Roval after colliding with his boss, Denny Hamlin, going into Turn 7 on lap 31 when the field stacked up behind a spinning Austin Dillon. Reddick was hot on the brakes when his car hit the left side of Hamlin's and went airborne.

The incident damaged the toe link of his Toyota. Reddick fell to 37th place after initially pitting and the rest of the afternoon saw more pit stops for repairs, having to drive through the field.

"I'm hurtin' now," Reddick said. "I got pretty airborne, right? It felt pretty crazy. My neck is probably a little sore, but there are a lot of good curbs you can go out there and jump; I was having to get aggressive and try to find speed. The car was still pretty good but it took all the repair work that everyone put in to finally get it somewhat drivable again.

"It was definitely a lot different from what we had in the beginning of the race. I think the track would have really come to what our car was in Stage 1, but just to get it back to where we were and be able to make passes was a good effort."

Reddick had been 14 points to the good entering the day, but after winning the first stage (which gave him 10 more), the incident in the second stage kept him out of the points. Logano earned 17 points between the first two stages.

"I'm behind and I can't see much," Reddick said of what happened in Turn 7. "I was just trying to get to the inside of , and I get inside and my eyes open up more. I can see the apex of the corner. The 3 is spun around and everybody is on the brakes stopping.

"You're expecting everyone to take that corner somewhat normally but as soon as I could see what was happening ahead, everyone was hitting the brakes and stopping to avoid a spin. It was the wrong place at the wrong time for us."

In the final stage, Reddick was mathematically below the cutline as the points were updated in real-time. However, the final caution with 29 laps to go allowed him to come to pit road for fresh tires.

He restarted 26th as Logano ran sixth. Then the march began.

Reddick was 24th with 25 laps to go and Logano was fifth. He was 23rd with 24 laps to go, 22nd with 23 laps to go, 21st with 22 laps to go and Logano was still fifth. The No. 45 was then 20th with 21 laps to go and Logano lost a spot, dropping to sixth.

With 20 laps to go, Reddick was 19th. At 18 laps to go, he was 17th (and the gap was then down to four points). He took 15th on the next lap, narrowing the gap to two points. Four laps later, he shrunk that gap to just one point by taking 14th.

At 11 to go, Reddick held station and Logano lost another spot, dropping to seventh, tying the two on the cutline. With nine to go, Reddick was 12th, giving him a two-point advantage. In two more laps, he picked up a further point on Logano when he took 11th place.

Logano then lost a further spot before the checkered flag, putting the final points gap at four.

"With how my car was driving before that pit stop, I was a bit unsure," Reddick said of getting back through the field. "But we kept making adjustments to the car."