Gritty ROVAL Comeback Propels Reddick Into Round Of 8

Tyler Reddick in action at the Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL. (Scotte Sprinkle/Race Face Digital photo)

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Tyler Reddick and the No. 45 team put the NASCAR Cup Series on notice by virtue of a potential championship-defining moment with their backs against the wall in Sunday’s Round of 12 elimination race at the Charlotte (N.C.) Motor Speedway ROVAL.

Upon exiting his Monster Energy Toyota Camry XSE just shy of a top 10 in 11th, the 23XI Racing driver was embraced by co-owners Michael Jordan and Denny Hamlin, following a memorable performance of perseverance that found him on the positive side of the points cutoff.

Entering the Bank of America ROVAL 400 as the winningest driver on road courses in the Next-Gen era with three, Reddick appeared primed for another dominant day, taking the green flag from the front row for the fifth time in 2024.

Following a tough four-race stretch of finishing 20th or worse, the Billy Scott-led team set the precedent early on they’d prioritize points racing, as they began the afternoon just 14 points to the good over ninth-ranked Joey Logano below the cutoff.

Set up for success on strategy – with the speed to boot – Reddick scored the stage one win, as well as the 10 points and additional playoff-point that came with it. Unfortunately, filling in right behind him was Logano in second and Chase Elliott in third – the two drivers ranked behind him in the playoff standings.

Although able to earn important benefits, Reddick didn’t gain much ground on his fellow championship hopefuls and found himself mired back in the middle of the pack to start stage two.

Early in the second stage, Reddick was the center of a chaotic mess, which saw him lock up his tires trying to evade a spinning car, then clobber the right side of his Camry against his team owner Hamlin’s No. 11.

While Hamlin escaped with minimal damage, Reddick had to duck to pit road to replace a flat right-rear tire and make additional extended stops for the crew to diagnose what wound up being a bent toe link.

With six-time NBA champion Jordan holding his breath atop the pit box, Scott managed the team as they worked to remedy Reddick’s car, with their hopes of advancing into the next round seeming to slip with each passing lap.

Things started to look grim when Logano wrapped up the second stage in third – tallying the most stage points on the day with 17 – while Reddick took the green-and-white-checkered flag as the last car on track in 36th.

Eight pit stops later, the No. 45 team got the car to where it was competitive enough for Reddick to gain some ground. With 39 to go, Logano began a green-flag cycle for the teams on the bubble as the first driver to do so. Reddick followed one lap later, while Elliott held out an additional two laps.

However, a final caution for debris with 29 laps left allowed Reddick and Scott to make their last-gasp strategy play – pitting for a fresh set of tires in hopes of driving their way through the field.

Reddick did exactly that. Though with 20 to go Elliott was scored fifth and Logano sixth, while Reddick was mired back in 19th and six points below the cutoff, as the laps continued to tick away, the Penske Ford began to drop while the 23XI Camry surged its way through the field.

With a handful of laps remaining, Reddick bustled his way by the likes of Hamlin and Martin Truex Jr., marching his way to an 11th-place finish, while Logano crossed the finish line in ninth in a nail-biting finish.

“I thought I was going to flip,” Reddick said of the earlier accident. “This thing was absolutely destroyed. Huge props to everyone on this Monster Energy Toyota Camry. This thing couldn’t go within four seconds of what the pace was, and we just kept working on it. We were a lot better in stage three. This is how this place can be sometimes, but it is really nice to pull this off.

“You just have to stay focused. In those moments, it is so easy to lose control. Either way, I was going to drive the car as fast as I could. It just worked out for us that this thing was able to get back through the field and get us to the good side of the cut line.”

Going into the playoffs, Reddick was the hottest driver in the sport, racking up eight top-10 finishes in a nine-race span and clinching the regular-season title by one-point over eventual ROVAL race winner Kyle Larson.

Prior to his and the team’s performance at Charlotte – and in similar fashion to his championship-winning team owner from decades earlier –  Reddick powered his way through a stomach bug in the regular-season finale at Darlington (S.C.) Raceway to earn 15 bonus points, which proved to be crucial in prolonging his quest for the Bill France Cup.

Though the math shifted after the race due to Alex Bowman’s disqualification for a weight infraction, which put Logano into the Round of 8 as well, Reddick’s poise under pressure was impossible to overlook.

Seeing what the team was able to overcome in the Bank of America ROVAL 400, it’s hard not to reflect back to 2021, when Larson succumbed to an electrical issue early at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway, but was able to rally his way into the next round and eventually win the championship that year.

Much like Jordan and Larson, Reddick is showing signs of why he should be heavily considered a favorite for the title this year. Having won back-to-back championships in the NASCAR Xfinity Series, he’s proven to be more than capable to make it happen at the sport’s top level.

Reddick will look to lock himself into the Championship 4 via a win in the Round of 8, which begins with the South Point 400 at Las Vegas (Nev.) Motor Speedway. Coverage is set for Oct. 20 at 2:30 p.m. ET on NBC, the Motor Racing Network, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, channel 90.