Reddick Beats Out Elliott For Road America Cup Win

Going into Sunday, Tyler Reddick has come close time and again to scoring his first career NASCAR Cup Series win, only to see the door slammed shut in his face.

At Road America on Sunday, Reddick kicked that door open and drove his No. 8 Chevrolet through into victory lane.

Reddick wrestled the lead away from Chase Elliott with 17 laps to go around the 4.048 mile, 14-turn road course. From there, he pulled out to just over a sizeable advantage en route to his first career series win.

It marks the first win of the year for Richard Childress Racing, and puts Reddick into the Playoffs with just eight races left in the regular season.

“What better place than Road America?” Reddick said. “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 Corning, California native also becomes the fifth first-time Cup Series winner of the season, joining Austin Cindric (Daytona), Chase Briscoe (Phoenix), Ross Chastain (Circuit of the Americas), and Daniel Suarez (Sonoma) on that list.

“Randall (Burnett, Crew Chief) has been working at this for a very long time and he’s always believed in me,” said Reddick. “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.”

Elliott had dominated the race, leading 38 laps on the day after starting on the pole. The tide turned during the final segment, as Reddick moved to second and began hounding the leader.

During the final round of green flag pit stops, Reddick left pit road on Elliott’s back bumper. One lap later, Reddick got a run in the turn 5 braking zone as Elliott No. 9 Chevrolet slide wide. The two made contact exiting the turn, with Reddick moving alongside and past as they duo raced through turn 6.

Elliott tried once more to outbreak Reddick in turn 9, but he couldn’t make the run stick.

From there, Reddick held the measure, even though Elliott closed a couple of times. In the end, Reddick crossed under the checkered flag by just over three seconds.

“Well, I definitely knew he (Elliott) was fast, but we could stay with him on the long run,” said Reddick. “That told me if we cycled through that last pit sequence, we’d be close or get around him, and we’d have a great shot. Didn’t quite get around him…we were within reach. Thankfully we just waited for the right opportunity and was able to take advantage of it in turn 6.

“I thought he was going to run me back down. I started to make some mistakes and started to take care of the brakes; apparently I didn’t need to. Yeah, very good shape there. What a day.”

After dominating most of the day, Elliott had to settle for a second place result.

“First off, congrats to him (Reddick),” said Elliott. “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.

“For us, just proud of our NAPA team. 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. After that, just started struggling.”

Elliott’s Hendrick Motorsports teammate, Kyle Larson, spent much of the day trying to chase down Elliott. In the end, he finished in third.

“Tyler (Reddick) and Chase (Elliott) 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.”

Trackhouse Racing teammates Chastain and Suarez finished in fourth and fifth, respectively, giving Chevrolet a sweep of the top five finishing positions.

“Our Advent Health Chevy was fast enough, we were just lacking mainly rear grip on throttle and in the rights (turns) especially,” said Chastain. “Got really slick there at the end and those guys didn’t slow down in the end as much as we did. A fourth-place car was where we ran most of the day.”

“I thought it was fine,” Suarez said. “For the car that we had, I thought that we maximized everything that we got. Proud of my team and my pit crew today, everyone did a great job. I felt like we had a top-seven car and we finished in the top-five, so I felt like we did a good job with that.”

Chris Buescher, Cindric, Michael McDowell, A.J. Allmendinger, and Kevin Harvick rounded out the top 10.

While there were a couple of off track excursions for a few drivers, the race ran mostly incident free, with the only caution flags coming out for the end of the two early race segments.

NASCAR Cup Series
Road America – Elkhart Lake, WI
Kwik Trip 250 – July 3, 2022

1. (4) Tyler Reddick, Chevrolet, 62.
2. (1) Chase Elliott, Chevrolet, 62.
3. (3) Kyle Larson, Chevrolet, 62.
4. (12) Ross Chastain, Chevrolet, 62.
5. (17) Daniel Suarez, Chevrolet, 62.
6. (7) Chris Buescher, Ford, 62.
7. (5) Austin Cindric #, Ford, 62.
8. (6) Michael McDowell, Ford, 62.
9. (21) A.J. Allmendinger(i), Chevrolet, 62.
10. (28) Kevin Harvick, Ford, 62.
11. (19) Ryan Blaney, Ford, 62.
12. (8) Alex Bowman, Chevrolet, 62.
13. (15) Martin Truex, Jr., Toyota, 62.
14. (2) Chase Briscoe, Ford, 62.
15. (10) Cole Custer, Ford, 62.
16. (29) William Byron, Chevrolet, 62.
17. (14) Denny Hamlin, Toyota, 62.
18. (16) Christopher Bell, Toyota, 62.
19. (33) Ricky Stenhouse, Jr., Chevrolet, 62.
20. (30) Ty Dillon, Chevrolet, 62.
21. (9) Joey Hand, Ford, 62.
22. (23) Harrison Burton #, Ford, 62.
23. (22) Kurt Busch, Toyota, 62.
24. (34) Justin Haley, Chevrolet, 62.
25. (32) Todd Gilliland #, Ford, 62.
26. (27) Erik Jones, Chevrolet, 62.
27. (18) Joey Logano, Ford, 62.
28. (24) Aric Almirola, Ford, 62.
29. (13) Kyle Busch, Toyota, 62.
30. (37) Kyle Tilley, Ford, 61.
31. (20) Austin Dillon, Chevrolet, Brakes, 60.
32. (31) Cody Ware, Ford, 59.
33. (11) Brad Keselowski, Ford, 58.
34. (35) Corey LaJoie, Chevrolet, 57.
35. (25) Bubba Wallace, Toyota, Brakes, 54.
36. (26) Josh Bilicki(i), Chevrolet, 52.
37. (36) Loris Hezemans(i), Ford, Fuel Pump, 9.

Average Speed of Race Winner: 96.622 mph.

Time of Race: 2 Hrs, 35 Mins, 51 Secs. Margin of Victory: 3.304 Seconds.

Caution Flags: 2 for 2 laps.

Lead Changes: 8 among 6 drivers.

Lap Leaders: C. Elliott 1-12;C. Briscoe 13-16;C. Elliott 17-28;R. Blaney 29-31;C. Elliott 32-43;R. Blaney 44;D. Hamlin 45;H. Burton # 46;T. Reddick 47-62.

Leaders Summary: (Driver, Times Lead, Laps Led) Chase Elliott 3 times for 36 laps; Tyler Reddick 1 time for 16 laps; Ryan Blaney 2 times for 4 laps; Chase Briscoe 1 time for 4 laps; Harrison Burton # 1 time for 1 lap; Denny Hamlin 1 time for 1 lap.

Stage #1 Top Ten: 14,2,48,22,45,21,23,43,31,9

Stage #2 Top Ten: 12,15,42,45,43,31,21,23,9,8

Playoff Standings: 1. Chase Elliott – 624 (2 Wins); 2. Ross Chastain – 589 (2 Wins); 3. Joey Logano – 551 (2 Wins); 4. William Byron – 489 (2 Wins); 5. Denny Hamlin – 394 (2 Wins); 6. Kyle Larson – 553 (1 Win); 7. Kyle Busch – 547 (1 Win); 8. Alex Bowman – 494 (1 Win); 9. Tyler Reddick – 441 (1 Win); 10. Austin Cindric – 431 (1 Win); 11. Kurt Busch – 424 (1 Win); 12. Chase Briscoe – 422 (1 Win); 13. Daniel Suarez – 420 (1 Win); 14. Ryan Blaney – 591; 15. Martin Truex, Jr. – 540; 16. Christopher Bell – 499.

(i) Ineligible for driver points in this series