What Happened?
Rather than making a step-back three, Tyler Reddick stepped up the banking in turn 3 of Homestead-Miami Speedway and rocketed around Ryan Blaney to win his way into the Championship 4 with Michael Jordan on the pit box.
The top two crossed the stripe in front of a number of other playoff drivers, beginning with Reddick’s co-owner Denny Hamlin in third. Defending race winner Christopher Bell and Chase Elliott finished fourth and fifth, respectively.
The No. 45 car also started from the pole, just the second time this season the pole winner has translated their qualifying speed into a race win.
What Really Happened?
Entering this weekend, the playoffs have not been kind to Reddick.
Some weeks, like at Bristol Motor Speedway and Kansas Speedway, the No. 45 team just did not have the racecar. At other races, like Watkins Glen International and Talladega Superspeedway, Reddick was involved in messes not of his own doing.
The past two weeks, however, Reddick’s aggressive style became his downfall. Reddick dug himself into a hole at the Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL, when an ambitious move in turn 7 led to contact with Hamlin and a damaged car.
While Reddick heroically drove back into playoff contention, another aggressive move around the high lane resulted in a tumble on the frontstretch at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
As evidenced by his late summer hot streak, Reddick knows how to get the job done when he can put a complete race together. He just had not done that — until this weekend.
Something about Homestead lends itself to Reddick’s tendencies to push the limit of car and track better than most others, and Reddick’s two Xfinity Series titles in Miami show just how good and aggressive Reddick can be.
The driver showed up, won the pole and ran well all day. The team also did a great job, utilizing an aggressive strategy in the final stage to put its driver in a position to have a chance.
When the race went green for the final few laps, Reddick didn’t drive like he had a slight tire disadvantage. Instead, he held his own and stayed in the game.
With the clock winding down, Reddick had three other drivers in need of a win licking their chops around him.
Much like Jordan against the Cleveland Cavaliers, the timer was ticking when Reddick saw a lane open. No, he didn’t ride the wall, but he fully sent his car with all of his might to the outside of Blaney.
With the incredible move in that final corner, Reddick showed why, despite his mistakes, his style as a driver will always keep him in contention to win races. Not to mention championships.
Who Stood Out?
The incredible move by the driver will be shown over and over for the rest of time, but crew chief Billy Scott deserves his flowers for the strategy call as well. Calling an alternate strategy that hinges on a timely caution usually doesn’t pan out, but the call was truly impressive.
More often than not, playoff teams mirror the strategies of one another with just a little variation. Instead of pitting with the other six playoff drivers or jumping onto the same strategy as the No. 11 team, Scott went with a different plan that panned out in the end.
With how much tires matter at Homestead, it was equally impressive that Scott completely left his driver out on the final pit stop. A week after the driver was discouraged with his overaggressive nature, the Reddick and Scott dynamic worked magically that now leads into the Championship 4.
For the first time in what seems like forever, the No. 9 car actually looked like it could compete for the win. Entering the weekend, Elliott had only led one lap in the entire playoffs, and he had only led more than 50 laps twice in the past two seasons.
It didn’t look like Elliott quite had the car to compete with Blaney once the No. 12 got out in front, but the No. 9 team could be a sneaky pick to win at Martinsville next week.
A couple of non-playoff drivers also had very nice days. AJ Allmendinger continued his Homestead Next Gen top-10 streak. He’s finished third and fifth in the past two seasons, and Allmendinger drove the car from 32nd to an eighth-place finish.
Kaulig Racing has almost taken a step back everywhere except road courses this year, and this Allmendinger top 10 is the best non-road course finish for a Kaulig car since The Dinger finished sixth in the Daytona 500.
Who Fell Flat?
During the playoffs, the biggest names have had some of the biggest disappointments. Once again, Kyle Larson left a lot on the table after multiple issues at Homestead. Early on, Larson had issues out of his own control when he had a tire go down and grazed the turn 2 wall. He still had a shot to win with laps winding down, but his level of aggression ended up costing him.
The decision to try and squeeze between the Nos. 3 and 12 honestly wasn’t a bad one. If Larson didn’t win, the other top drivers would certainly drop him to the cut line heading to Martinsville Speedway. Larson did seem to have just enough space, but he misjudged it and went spinning instead.
Larson needs to make up seven points on Byron while hoping we don’t see another new winner at Martinsville.
There were a few surprising misses from the best of the rest, but the biggest non-factor had to be Ross Chastain. After winning Kansas a few weeks ago, it seemed like Trackhouse Racing had righted the ship and found some consistency. They even finished seventh at Las Vegas.
Despite setting the second-fastest time in practice, the No. 1 car was nowhere to be found all race. Chastain wound up finishing 33rd, his worst non-DNF of the season.
Better Than Last Time?
Homestead is another track that never fails to deliver, yet this was one of the best, most complete NASCAR races of the season, and even better than Bell’s redemption-earning win in 2023.
For whatever reason, the restarts seemed more intense than usual. While cars fan out on the straightaways at some tracks, the drivers found ways to use every inch of the banking on restarts Sunday afternoon (Oct. 27).
The incredibly entertaining sights continued well into the runs as battles and strategies progressed. Homestead is one of the few racetracks left where you can still visually see drivers sliding the rear tires as they try to throttle up while racing one another, and there were numerous side-by-side battles where drivers had incredible catches and contact while keeping all four wheels pointed in the right direction.
The final restart wasn’t set up by a caution caused by a car multiple laps down. Instead, it came more naturally after a battle for the lead went sideways — literally. It also set up the four drivers below the cut line, in need of a win, lining up in the first four spots on the restart. And it ended, of course, in an incredible seven-lap run to the finish.
I’m not a believer that one track should be the set finale every year and would love to see a rotation, but Homestead-Miami Speedway should absolutely be in the conversation to be one of the last three races every season.
Paint Scheme of the Race
The most sentimental paint scheme of the race unfortunately ran disappointingly slow, finishing 23rd. However, it was nice to see Martin Truex Jr. return to his championship-winning Bass Pro Shops scheme for his final full-time race at Homestead.
What’s Next?
The NASCAR Cup Series will set its Championship 4 when the smoke settles after the final race in the Round of 8 at Martinsville Speedway on Sunday, Nov. 3. The Xfinity 500 will start at 2 p.m. ET on NBC.
Caleb began sports writing in 2023 with The Liberty Champion, where he officially covered his first NASCAR race at Richmond in the spring. While there, Caleb met some of the guys from Frontstretch, and he joined the video editing team after graduating from Liberty University with degrees in Strategic Communications and Sports Journalism. Caleb currently work full-time as a Multi-Media Journalist with LEX 18 News in Lexington, Kentucky and contributes to Frontstretch with writing and video editing. He's also behind-the-scenes or on camera for the Happy Hour Podcast, live every Tuesday night at 7:30!
i keep waiting to read that reddick was found illegal at post race tech.
oh what will nascar do if, by some chance, the 45 wins the championship. will be strange since the owners of 45 are involved in a lawsuit with the sanctioning body.
Which is why Mr. H did not appeal Bowman. All the fast cars at this point in the season are technically illegal.
I figured there would be more comments about how somebody paid NASCAR to let the 45 win, but then that falls flat cuz of the lawsuit. Like what was said last week about Joey Logano’s win.
I thought it was a good race, but I also think Homestead went too far with their progressive banking like Bristol did. There’s no good reason why drivers should favor the top lane so much.
Seems Verstappen uses the Hamlin method of going into a corner with a car on the outside.