Tyler Reddick won Sunday’s (Feb. 15) Autotrader 400 at EchoPark Speedway in double overtime after clearing Carson Hocevar on the final lap and holding off Chase Briscoe.
Despite being caught up in an earlier incident with Denny Hamlin, Reddick, whose car had no right front fender, scored the 10th win of his career and became the first driver since Matt Kenseth in 2009 to go back-to-back to start a NASCAR season.
Briscoe, Ross Chastain, Carson Hocevar, Daniel Suarez, Shane van Gisbergen, Zane Smith, Bubba Wallace, Ryan Preece and Ryan Blaney rounded out the top 10 finishers.
Briscoe started 34th but ended up with a solid runner-up finish.
“We’re fast enough to where we can drive through the field. Even with all the adversity that kind of happened on pit road, when you start that far back, you don’t get good pit stall selection,” Briscoe said. “It just buries you all day long.”
Hocevar, meanwhile, might be the most talked about driver in Sunday’s race. He finished fourth on a night where he provided plenty of fireworks.
“I guess we’re really good at getting to the white flag leading,” Hocevar said. “Our car was really fast. I was taking every run, I’m sure I owe people apologies.”
Wallace won stage two and led laps for the second straight week before fading to the back half of the top 10 in the race’s final moments.
“Need to go back and see, I didn’t think I moved up that much to allow… put myself top of three,” Wallace told said. “Unfortunate, but man, what a race car I had today.”
The race went into double overtime after Hocevar spun Christopher Bell in turn 1 on the first overtime attempt. Bell finished 21st.
The final caution of regulation came out with four laps to go after a crash involving William Byron, Austin Dillon, stage one winner Austin Cindric, Joey Logano and Cole Custer. Logano had previously spun with 22 laps to go off turn 4.
With 37 laps to go, Denny Hamlin spun on the frontstretch in a crash that also collected Tyler Reddick, William Byron, AJ Allmendinger, Alex Bowman, Michael McDowell and Connor Zilisch.
Cindric won stage one after carving his way through the pack from a 30th-place starting position.
Wallace won stage two in a photo finish with Byron, but behind them, Kyle Larson was hitting the wall. Larson spun after contact with Shane van Gisbergen sent SVG spinning through the infield and the No. 5 up the track.
Kyle Busch crashed on lap 125 after attempting to slide up in front of Noah Gragson on the backstretch. Busch’s No. 8 got loose and instead spun down into the inside wall.
On lap 103, Riley Herbst spun Austin Dillon. Dillon was able to gather his No. 3, but Herbst spun right into the path of Ricky Stenhouse Jr. Herbst, Stenhouse Jr. and BJ McLeod were all forced out of the race after the crash.
On lap 84, Josh Berry clipped Ty Gibbs, sending Gibbs into the wall and back into Berry, whose No. 21 Ford also sustained terminal damage.
Autotrader 400 Results
The Cup Series will return at Circuit of the Americas on March 1, with coverage on FOX at 3:30 p.m. ET.
A member of the National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA), Samuel also covers NASCAR for Yardbarker, Field Level Media, and Heavy Sports. He will attend the University of Arkansas in the fall of 2025.
Sure is a great “race” when the lead Toys are holding up two lanes in the 170s when the fastest lap by the 41 is 186.572 mph. just like Daytona and more of the same at Talladega. Yawn! Wake me for the GWCs.
He got lucky due to SVG making a abrupt right turn slamming into Kyle Larson, ending his day. That’s basically how Harvick and Bowyer saw it. We all know Harvick and Bowyer hate SVG, it’s too bad these little children don’t have to balls to tell Shane to his face.
Larson came down on SVG and admitted it.