It looked as though Tyler Reddick was in position to win his first race of the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season in Sunday’s AutoTrader EchoPark Automotive 400 at Texas Motor Speedway. Then, a series of late-race events saw that opportunity slip from the No. 45 team’s grasp.
Reddick unloaded off the hauler with the quickest car at the fast, 1.5-mile oval. The No. 45 Toyota was the standard on 10, 15 and 20-lap averages in Saturday’s 20-minute practice session. That speed came to life throughout the race.
As Kyle Larson ran away with the opening stage, Reddick maintained track position and scored seven stage points by finishing fourth. The second stage was filled with six cautions, splitting up the field’s strategy. Reddick was mired outside the top 10, missing out on stage points by one position.
Amid the differing strategies, Reddick drove to the lead for the first time in the race on Lap 180, when he passed Harrison Burton. Over the next 34 laps, the No. 45 car set sail of second place Denny Hamlin by more than five seconds before pitting for the final time on Lap 214. The No. 45 team continued a trend of having trouble on pit road, as the team was hung up on the left-rear tire. The pit stop was timed at 18.4 seconds, more than seven seconds slower than Hamlin, who leaped his 23XI Racing car.
It didn’t take long for Reddick to chase down — and pass — Hamlin. When John Hunter Nemechek wrecked on Lap 230 during the same cycle of green-flag pit stops, 13 drivers had yet to pit. Reddick was among a handful of drivers that passed the leader before the caution flew and stayed out to restart as the race leader.
Chase Elliott got the lead on the restart, allowing Hamlin to squeeze by for second. Reddick dropped back to fourth, and smacked the wall on the frontstretch while battling Brad Keselowski for third.
“We had control of the race with our Beast Unleashed Camry, and we lost control of it,” Reddick said. “That is kind of the story of the end of the race for us.”
Despite four additional caution flags, including two overtimes, Reddick couldn’t fully rebound and finished fourth. It marks his third top-five finish in the opening quarter of the season.
“We had control of the restart that mattered, and we didn‘t execute,” Reddick said. “Just kept focusing on the wrong things. All day long, I‘d been really aggressively blocking the car behind going me into Turn 1, and it really hurt us going into the center of Turn 2. Just made bad adjustments at the wrong time, and we gave away the race.”
Dating back to finishing fifth at Circuit of The Americas, Reddick has strung together four straight top-10 finishes. That stretch includes a pair of top 10s at two of his toughest tracks on the circuit at Richmond Raceway (10th) and Martinsville Speedway (seventh). The four-race streak is the most consecutive top 10s that Reddick has put together in Cup competition.
Up next is Talladega Superspeedway where Reddick is looking to improve on two top-10 finishes in eight starts.
