Dropping the Hammer: Tyler Reddick Shocks & Awes at Homestead

HOMESTEAD, Fla. — Tyler Reddick has a favorite track and favorite corner on the NASCAR Cup Series circuit: Homestead-Miami Speedway, turns 3 and 4.

“It just feels like you can drive a lot deeper in there than you should,” Reddick explained. “I’ve always felt that way about that corner. Just feels like you can, when the moment is right, do some pretty crazy stuff over there.”

Reddick loves “stepping over the edge. This place seems to reward that to some degree.”

One of those moments came on the final lap of Sunday’s (Oct. 27) NASCAR Cup Series playoff race, with Reddick in a position he and others were surprised he was even in.

Having a shot at the win.

Fifteen laps earlier, Kyle Larson had put his No. 5 Chevrolet into a hole that closed too fast and brought out the caution flag.

Moments earlier, Reddick had left pit road with four fresh tires, which is usually a good thing.

Instead, Reddick had felt, “backed into a corner.”

The 23XI Racing driver had to pit after running extra long during green flag pit stops, hoping to catch a caution that would help keep his playoffs hopes alive.

Now, everyone would get to pit for fresh tires.

Reddick was told by his spotter, “we’re going to stay out.”

“Oh, s–t, we’re going to stay out?” Reddick thought. “We’re going to figure this out.”

Being at a tire disadvantage at Homestead, a track known for tire wear, is usually a “death sentence,” Reddick said.

And if you’re the leader and out front on older tires, it’s expected the leader will, “get taken advantage of,” said Reddick’s crew chief, Billy Scott.

“People put them in a bad spot,” Scott continued. “Every corner that goes by, it gets closer and closer to being equal. The biggest advantage with those on stickers is the very first corner.”

Reddick remembered an earlier restart when multiple cars on slightly older tires stayed out and had “their doors blown off.”

“Turn 1 went about as good as I thought it could have went,” said Reddick, who was quickly overtaken on the outside by his 23XI team owner Denny Hamlin when the race resumed with seven laps to go.

“That wasn’t great,” Reddick admitted. “We settled in there. I didn’t know how bad we were going to bleed.

“I drove into turn 3 kind of, I don’t know, out of desperation, I kind of held serve. I was very shocked by that.”

The shocks would continue.

“What was a surprise was how quickly he was able to overcome the tire disadvantage and still make something work,” Scott said.

As the white flag waved, Reddick was still there, the last car in a three-way battle for the win with Hamlin and Ryan Blaney.

“I was completely shocked we were able to stay in the mix like we were,” Reddick said.

As the trio roared into turn 1 for the last time, Reddick “made the right guess,” going low and sweeping beneath Hamlin and taking second off turn 2.

Reddick, getting a run on Blaney, “was just blown away” by his momentum going toward turn 3.

Scott, “probably still trying to recover from watching him drive by” Hamlin, had an idea of what was coming — if it came to it — a day in advance.

Scott saw it during his driver’s second round qualifying run around Homestead Miami-Speedway, when he sailed the car off into the high lane of turn 3.

“I figured he was going to send it on the top because that’s where his comfort zone is,” Scott said. “I knew what he was going to do,” but he, “didn’t know what to expect, honestly.”

Trying to outrun Reddick, Blaney “didn’t know which way he was going to go.

“It timed out perfect for him, getting to my bumper as soon as we got to the corner.”

Blaney thought he “had a decent plan.” He would go into the corner fast just a “couple lanes off the wall” and slide up, blocking Reddick’s run.

Meanwhile, Reddick “thought there was no way … Blaney was going to leave me the outside. He must have thought that I was just going to absolutely dive bomb it off in there to try to get around him.”

But then Reddick saw the Team Penske driver start his move that would end with him sliding up further into the turn.

“I hit the gas and forgot about everything else,” Reddick said.

It worked.

“I couldn’t believe it.”

Neither could Blaney.

“I sent it in there and he sent it in miles further than me,” Blaney said. “Which I cannot believe it stuck.”

Blaney said Reddick’s entry was “impressive.”

“I’ve seen that with the Toyoatas, their entry speed is just ridiculous,” the Ford driver added. “It’s something we don’t have.”

Seconds after doing his best impression of Cole Trickle on the last lap at Darlington Raceway in Days of Thunder, Reddick took the checkered flag.

A week after going for a tumble and leaving Las Vegas Motor Speedway 30 points below the playoff cut line, Reddick was locked into the Championship 4.

When it was all over, a crowd of people formed around the No. 45 Toyota on the frontstretch. Among them was the 23XI Racing co-owner that Reddick hadn’t just beaten on the track.

When Michael Jordan got to his driver, he bent down, grabbed him in a bear hug and lifted him off the ground.

“Little kid drove his ass off. I’m proud of him,” said Jordan, someone who knows a thing or two about “Did you see that?” moments. “He just let go.”