Tyler Reddick rolled from the grid in Saturday night’s Digital Ally 400 at Kansas Speedway from the 21st starting spot, and expectations were very low for the 23-year old driver who was making his second career start in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series.
Turns out the expectations should have been higher — much higher as Reddick came home with a solid ninth place finish.
Reddick had a solid top-15 car on the night, but the key to turning a good race into a great night was a perfectly timed caution.
Late in the race, Reddick was one of eight cars who had not pitted during a green flag pit stop sequence when a caution came out for a loose wheel on pit road. This trapped the other 32 cars in the field one lap or more down.
“We are very fortunate to have a lot of cars that were trapped down a lap or two,” Reddick explained. “It honestly saved us from having a pretty unfortunate finish to how good we were at times throughout the race.”
It’s easy to get greedy in Motorsports though. After having a potential top-15 run turn into a slam dunk top-10 effort, Reddick walked away from Kansas disappointed.
“I think we could have definitely had a little more there with the way the situation played out,” Reddick said. “From that aspect, it’s disappointing, but a top ten has a lot of positives. It was a lot of fun driving the car. It was a unique opportunity. I always want more. I’ve raced against some of these guys in the Xfinity Series. It’s still a lot of fun to finish in the top ten, but we didn’t come here to run top ten. We can here for the win.”
Not only was it an eye-opening performance for the 2018 NASCAR Xfinity Series champion, but he also out performed Richard Childress Racing’s two full-time Cup Series drivers (Austin Dillon and Daniel Hemric) on Saturday night.
