Tyler Reddick and 23XI Racing blew the doors off the NASCAR world Tuesday with the announcement that Reddick would joint the team in 2024.
Richard Childress Racing itself was “shocked” when it found out it would be losing the driver it had just won a Cup race with nine days earlier.
While the shock may not have wore off completely, Reddick is still on speaking terms with Chevrolet.
Appearing on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio Thursday morning, Jim Campbell, the VP of GM Performance & Motorsports, shared that he had talked with the 26-year-old Reddick at some point in the previous 48 hours.
“So we’re disappointed to lose him down the road here, but I’ve had a chance to talk with him and the RCR team and Tyler is completely committed to running every lap as hard as he can throughout the rest of this year and next and I do believe him,” Campbell said. “He is going to do that … this is big news and obviously the team had to get their head around it, as does everybody. But I’m convinced that Tyler will give it 100% every race between now and the time that he goes on to his next chapter.”
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While RCR was “shocked” at Reddick’s news, Campbell said Chevy “was aware” Reddick was looking at other possibilities, even after RCR quietly exercised an option on him for 2023 earlier this year.
“When you have an option year, you’re looking at your options,” Campbell said. “I think we were aware of that. Disappointed that he didn’t land with another Chevy team. But we’re involved at Chevy and in our company, within other divisions with a lot of different series around North America and around the world and there are moments where this stuff happens and so we just got to manage our way through it.”
But Reddick’s next chapter won’t arrive for 18 months.
That’s more than a year-and-a-half with Reddick still representing the Chevrolet and RCR brand before he heads off to Toyota and 23XI Racing.
Campbell didn’t seem too concerned about losing secrets to a competitor, citing Chevrolet involvement in many other racing series, like IndyCar, NHRA and IMSA.
“When these moments happen, we do have ways to manage and just make sure that we are protecting any proprietary information or technology,” Campbell said. “We’ve done it before. We’ll do it in this case, and we’ll do it in a way that’s respectful of all the parties and then keep the focus on hard racing every weekend and that’s what we’ll do.”
No Deadline For Kyle Busch Agreement
While Martin Truex Jr. is locked-in at Joe Gibbs Racing for 2023, the future of two-time Cup champion Kyle Busch is still unknown.
As everyone was reeling from the Reddick news, SPEED SPORT used the press conference announcing the news on Tuesday to find out where Toyota was at in the process of trying to keep Kyle Busch in the family, which depends on JGR being able to find sponsorship to replace Mars, Inc., which is leaving after this year.
SPEED SPORT asked David Wilson, the president of Toyota Racing Development, if there was a hard deadline for when Toyota and JGR had to have a contract in place.
“No, there’s not an absolute when it comes to this issue,” Wilson said. “It is, .. as the industry acknowledges, it’s a tough sport and sponsorship is critical to our long-term success across the board. So we are working diligently, hand in glove with with with Joe (Gibbs), Coy (Gibbs) and Dave Alpern and Kyle, obviously. We’re acting in good faith and we’re gonna continue to do so and and we’re just keeping our heads down.”
Trackhouse Racing Part of Chevy’s ‘Key Partners’ Model
In only its second year of existence – and its first as a standalone team – Trackhouse Racing has rocketed to the front of the NASCAR Cup Series field, winning three times through 19 races.
Even Campbell views the success of the Justin Marks-owned team as “significant.”
“Teams that are this young, typically don’t get this kind of traction that fast,” Campbell told SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. “One difference is that Justin and Chip (Ganassi) created the agreement for Justin to purchase the assets of the company.”
After operating in-house at Richard Childress Racing in 2021, Marks purchased all of Chip Ganassi Racing’s NASCAR assets. When the move became official after the 2021 season, roughly 110 of Ganassi’s employees stayed on with Trackhouse.
“They retained a lot of important talent over there,” Campbell said. “(Car chief) Tony Lunders was a key individual on that team. And there’s many like that Darian Grubb and others on that team that stayed for consistency from one organization to the next.”
There is another piece of the Trackhouse puzzle that has likely been key to the frontrunning speed of Ross Chastain and Daniel Suarez through the first 19 races of the NASCAR season.
That’s GM’s “Key Partners” initiative.Â
Hendrick Motorsports, Richard Childress Racing and Ganassi were part of the model in 2021.Â
“When they made the transition (to Trackhouse), we thought about it and decided, despite the fact that it’s a new team, that we would transition that key partnership from Chip’s organization, right to Justin Marks and Ty Norris. So they are on the inside of all of our development work. They’re a key part of our decision making. And I think all of that also created the ability to get traction quickly and gain momentum very quickly now.”
TV Ratings
After a disappointing showing in the ratings for the NASCAR Cup Series race at Road America on July 3, a rebound was seen in Sunday’s race at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
The USA Network broadcast of the second Cup race on the reconfigured 1.54-mile track drew an average of 2.658 million viewers. That was marginally higher than the 2.513 million viewers for the second Atlanta race last year. But it topped the number of every Cup broadcast last year on the now defunct NBCSN.