Tyler Reddick Scores 2nd Career Win at Indianapolis

When it comes to road course races, some drivers that come to your mind in recent years are the likes of Chase Elliott, Kyle Larson, and AJ Allmendinger. Perhaps it’s time to add another driver to that list, that being Tyler Reddick, as he earned his second career Cup Series victory at the Indianapolis Road Course this past Sunday.

Reddick has to fight through many wild restarts, including the last one, where he got into an intense battle with Ross Chastain, who ended up being penalized for not performing a “stop-and-go” in the turn one access road. This comes about four weeks after Reddick earned his first career win at Road America and a couple of weeks after it was announced he will move over to 23XI Racing in 2024. Reddick led a race-high 38 laps in the Verizon 200.

“Well, we just know what we’re capable of, and we did that at Road America,” said Reddick in his post-race interview. “Certainly, was a little bump in the road, but we went out and won a race fair and square a couple weeks ago, and if we change nothing, we keep working really, really hard, we find a way back to Victory Lane. Just really glad to be able to do it here in Indianapolis. This is one really special place to race, and really excited to kiss the bricks here in a little bit and really excited we got (sponsor) 3CHI their win in their hometown.”

When Ross Chastain lined up fifth on the final restart, he went wide onto the access road in turn one and came out swapping the lead with Tyler Reddick. Tyler Reddick was rather shocked by Ross Chastain’s strategy.

“I was like, ‘Uh-oh,’” Reddick said. “But that was a scenario that had been talked about. If you get bottled up, what do you do? Take the access road. I couldn’t believe he got ahead of me. I was kind of waiting to see if he was going to have a penalty because I didn’t want to move him out of the way and make his race worse than what it was.

“Yeah, I was really surprised by that, but, hey, we made it work. Hats off to Ross for trying to do that, but really glad it didn’t end up working out because I’d have been pretty pissed off.”

Chastain was penalized by NASCAR officials, putting him back to 27th while Daytona 500 winner Austin Cindric was bumped up to a runner-up place finish. Chastain commented on it afterward.

“Just trying not to be in the chaos there in Turn 1,” Chastain said. “I thought we were four-wide, and couldn’t go any farther right, and decided to take the NASCAR access lane out there.”

“Just pure reaction there, for our Worldwide Express Chevy. I took it in practice on exit, overshooting Turn 1. Yeah, just wanted to not get hit, and merged back on where I merged.”

Harrison Burton finished third and Austin Cindric finished fourth, making it for the first time since 1994 at Pocono that three rookies have finished in the top five in a Cup race. Bubba Wallace finished fifth, as Joey Logano, AJ Allmendinger, Michael McDowell, Cole Custer, and Chris Buescher rounded out the top ten. Allmendinger, who won the Xfinity race the day before, nearly collapsed after getting out of his car after the race due to the cooling unit in his suit failing. Allmendinger was treated with plenty of fluids and was ok shortly after. Ty Gibbs finished 17th after filling in for the injured Kurt Busch for the second race in a row.

The race was rather clean until lap 62 when Kyle Larson’s No. 5 Chevrolet lost brakes, causing him to slam hard into the No. 42 of Ty Dillon. Both drivers walked out, as Larson ran over to Dillon to apologize and explain what happened.

Ryan Blaney was in the hunt to win the race as well but on the final restart spun out in turn one, costing him a good finish. It would’ve meant valuable points as Blaney currently sits near the bubble of making the playoffs. Blaney and Truex are 15th and 16th, respectively, in the Playoff standings with four races left in the regular season. After Sunday’s race, Blaney leads Truex by 25 points.

28-year-old and former Formula 1 Driver Daniil Kvyat made his NASCAR Cup Series debut in a second car for Team Hezeberg, the No. 26 Toyota, as this was also his first time driving competitively since December 2020. He finished 36th after completing 43 laps and going behind the wall with competitive issues. Kvyat also seemed interested in running more NASCAR events in the future.

He talked about the comparison between NASCAR and Formula 1, and he said that they are completely opposite worlds.

“They way the cars drive, how you need to drive them, they’re complete opposites, like day and night. They’re both really great fun in different ways, but the guys here, they do this kind of racing since they are 7 years old, 8 years old, so I just came to completely new territory.”

Kvyat plans to run one or two more NASCAR races this summer, but he would consider racing a full season as soon as next year if everything lined up right.

The NASCAR Cup Series heads next to Michigan International Speedway on Sunday, August 7th at 3 PM EST on USA and SiriusXM NASCAR.