How Reddick became NASCAR's driver to beat – on Forza

Today at 10:20 AM

So far Mobil 1’s Legend vs Leaderboard series on Forza Motorsport has allowed gamers to go up against real world motor racing stars in hot lap contests on the Xbox game.

The final installment of the series is no different, but to decide which driver would be setting the time for the rest of the world to beat, he had to go up against a few of his 'day job' rivals first. Four TRD NASCAR Cup Series drivers John Hunter Nemechek, Bubba Wallace, Christopher Bell, and Tyler Reddick all faced off in a lap time contest of their own, with 23XI Racing driver Reddick prevailing.

Reddick says he's something of a gamer himself who's logged plenty of hours on Forza Motorsport and Forza Horizon's many iterations, so he immediately felt like the content would be right up his street. Almost.

"I still find time for it every now and again," he tells RACER of whether he games amid his relentless NASCAR schedule. "If I have free time and the kids are in bed and the wife is tired and falling asleep, I like to game in my free time. That’s just how I’ve always been.

"When I heard about it, I thought, 'my God, yeah, perfect'. I played a lot of Forza games, I'm good with the controller. I mean, I’m not fantastic, I’m not saying that. I’m okay at it, but I have a lot of experience with it. And so I got really excited about the whole thing.

"Then we got there and we’re using rigs. And I was like, 'oh, no, a steering wheel on Forza, I don’t know what to do. I only played it with the controller'. It took a minute to figure it out, but it was a lot of fun."

Going up against the same guys he races against week-in, week-out adds another layer of intrigue to us onlookers, but while it was a fun exercise with nothing on the line, Reddick admits it added pressure as well.

"Oh, yeah! I wish I would have gone into it without any pressure," he says. "But I played a lot of different Forza titles over the years, so going into it there was pressure because of that, and because I was going to use a rig instead of my handy controller. I was like, 'man, I can’t let these guys beat me'.

"I don’t think Bubba has a whole lot of background with it. Christopher, not so much. And John Hunter, I didn’t know, so we were all pretty close at the start of it. John Hunter put a really, really good lap down. And I’m like, 'I don’t think I have it'. And somehow I put together – in my own eyes, for what I was able to do at the time – a pretty good lap. But I know these other players are going to prove me otherwise. I just have a feeling."

As with the previous Legend vs Leaderboard challenges, the contest takes place on the fictional Maple Valley Raceway – albeit this time in treacherous wet conditions. It's a place that Reddick feels lends itself well to single lap running, and would do the same if it were to exist in the real world.

"It’s one of those tracks that would be really, really fun, you versus the track. I think it’d be fun in any kind of race car, in that sense," he says. "I feel like it would be a track that would be really well suited for something that’s got a lot of horsepower, not great with braking to really make a lot of the flowy sections a bit more challenging. But it is a really fun track when you hit it right.

"The layout we were doing, you were having to somewhat thread the needle. You’re trying to not use too much distance through the first big sweeping right hander and end up too wide to mess up the next section that the short course we were running. It was really tricky to get it right.

"It’s so flowy, momentum-based, and me being a controller player, typically, I struggle with some of those unless I’ve put a lot of time in and kind of gotten it down. I feel like some of the bigger braking zones, tighter corners, it’s a lot easier for me to manage it on a controller.

"We used the steering wheel, so I wonder how those challenges will present themselves to those that use it on the controller, too. On the wheel side of things, you just felt like you had to be really ahead of the car in those conditions. There’s a bit of the body roll and whatnot. You just stay mindful of the attitude of your car, especially on the first half of the lap."

It wasn't a high-horsepower monster that Reddick was using, but rather the 1985 Toyota Sprinter Trueno GT Apex, a car made famous by Japanese anime series Initial D – and something that brought back fond memories for the eight-time Cup Series race winner.

"For me, that was cool, because I’ve always really liked this car," he says. "I remember stumbling across Initial D, the TV show, as a kid, and loved the TV show. The whole concept of it, I was hooked. I watched all the series, so I was locked in on that years ago.

"So for me, I always really liked that car. Because of that show, for me, I always really, really, really enjoyed that little car. Pretty much every Forza game I had, I would do it up with the white and the black. I’d always turn it into a drift car and go sliding around and whatnot on the different Forza titles."

Reddick's 54.305s lap time will be a benchmark of the Rivals element of the game from November 28 through December 11, and for those looking to topple him – something he's somewhat expecting, saying he's "worried that these pros and rivals are just going to eat me up" – he says leaning on the ghost car and learning from it could prove key.

"What’s so fun about rivals in the past, when I’ve done it, is you get to use the ghost car if you want it, you know the time splits, all that stuff," he says. "I’ve always really enjoyed the ghost car because you can see exactly where they’re running. Just being able to chase the ghost car really helps you get so close you got to figure out the other little details."

Reddick's Legend vs Leaderboard time will be available on the Rivals element of the game from November 28 through December 11, concluding the series that previously featured Tony Stewart, Jamie Chadwick, and Jenson Button. The announcement of Reddick's inclusion comes just over two weeks after NASCAR itself returned to Forza – and that's something he feels is "huge" for the series.

"You’re able to take our cars and run them on the tracks that you have (in the game). I’ve seen clips of individuals taking the cars to Daytona and Homestead and drafting and doing all that sort of stuff, I think it’s cool," he says. "Obviously, NASCAR has their own things that they’re working on, but being able to throw our cars into a game like Forza, and being able to, if you want… I always really enjoyed getting in a stock car and matching up against something completely different.

"It’s always fun to be able to mix and match. You can’t quite do that and other other game titles. When you’re playing a NASCAR game, you’re racing in stock cars and whatnot, when you go on Forza, you kind of have that freedom to mix it up if you want and race against other things, or take it to tracks that we’ll never see. So I think it’s fun from that aspect."

And for the NASCAR drivers, it can be a handy tool as we get further into the off-season.

"I feel like I can work on my marks, getting in a rhythm, being consistent," says Reddick. “I do get positives out of it. I feel like it kind of feeds my competitive drive. I would always find that when I played Motorsport, just that competitive drive to win, to beat your competition, I always would enjoy. I always really enjoy making the car work, and then going to work on it, tune on it, trying to find the right balance of power to handling.

"So for me, when I can’t get that at the racetrack, or when I’m not at the racetrack, and I want to feed that energy or get some of that competitive energy out, for me, it’s really fun to pick the controller up and turn the game on.

"It’s just something that was always really fun because you just have so many choices of vehicles. I’m the kind of car person that, depending on what mood I’m in, is what car I’m in a drive in the game or in real life.

"If I’m really wanting to have a little fun on the way to work, I hop in my Supra. If I'm wanting to still have some of that, but have a different flavor of it, I’m getting into my GR Corolla, so I feel like I’m kind of that way as a person with cars anyway, and Forza has allowed me, over the years, to be able to tap into that with my controller in front of my TV."