Tyler Reddick Wins His First NASCAR Cup Series Race At Road America
by racerx55 July 4, 2022 1 commentStory/Photo by Alex Nowak
ELKHART LAKE, Wis. – Tyler Reddick picked up his first-career NASCAR Cup Series victory at Road America on Sunday after outdueling Chase Elliott and making the race-winning pass with 16 laps to go.
Two-Time NASCAR Xfinity Series champion, Reddick had a tough road to his first victory in 92 NASCAR Cup Series starts. His career has been filled with numerous top-10 finishes and a last-lap crash while leading this season at Bristol Dirt. After the race, Reddick shared his thoughts about the significance of the Kwik Trip 250 presented by JOCKEY Mad in America and what it meant for his team.
“What better place than Road America,” said Reddick, who became the 13th different winner of 2022. “I love the fans. I love this racetrack. Being here on 4th of July weekend is just so special, and just a huge shout out to 3Chi and the special paint scheme we had this weekend. Love that they’re coming on board this year and taking a chance on a young guy like me, and we got it done. We won a race.”
The win marked a number of firsts for the Richard Childress Racing No. 8 3Chi team. In addition to Reddick earning his first victory, it was also the first win for crew chief, Randall Burnett.
“Randall has been working at this for a very long time, and he’s always believed in me,” Reddick said. “Everyone on this team at Richard Childress Racing has believed in me. I’ve made a lot of mistakes along the way, but man, this year has been one step, one mistake away from greatness all year long, and we finally did it today, it feels good.”
Much like Kyle Larson in Saturday’s NASCAR Xfinity Series race, Elliott led the majority of the race (36 laps), but he couldn’t hold off Reddick for the victory, and he had to settle for a runner-up finish. When asked about trying to hold off Reddick in Stage 3, Elliott gave praise to Reddick and his team on their first victory and a few mistakes that lead to lost momentum late in the race.
“First off, congrats to him (Reddick),” Elliott said. “I know he’s been super close to that first win, and I’ve been down that road and it can be a rocky one. I’m happy for those guys. They deserve it. I didn’t do a very good job there. I just let him stay close enough to pressure me there while we had decent tires and never could get enough of a gap. Made a couple mistakes. I was gaining a gap there a couple times and made a couple mistakes and let him get back close enough to get me out of sync, and then after that just started struggling.”
Larson finished third, but he had nothing for Elliott and Reddick all day long. The third-place effort marked Larson’s eight top-five of the season.
“Tyler and Chase were really good throughout the duration of a run,” Larson said. “I seemed to be okay early and then would kind of just slowly fade away from them. You know, I don’t really know. I felt honestly pretty good, but they must have just had better grip. They were really good road racers. Honestly probably a little bit better than I am.”
Rounding out the top-10 was Ross Chastain, Daniel Suarez, Chris Buescher, Austin Cindric, Michael McDowell, Aj Allmendinger and Kevin Harvick.
The only cautions throughout the 62-lap race were for the conclusion of stages. Chase Briscoe won Stage 1, and Ryan Blaney won stage 2.
The NASCAR Cup Series will return to the newly configured Atlanta Motor Speedway on Sunday, July 10 for the Quaker State 400 Presented by Walmart. Live coverage of the race will broadcast on USA and PRN at 3 p.m. ET.
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