KANSAS CITY, Kan. — Though he’s in the round of 12, the first three races of Tyler Reddick’s NASCAR Cup Series playoff run certainly didn’t go to plan.
In the round of 16, the regular-season champion recorded two finishes of 20th or worse after starting things out with a sixth at Atlanta Motor Speedway. The 28-year-old had a plethora of issues at Watkins Glen (N.Y.) Int’l, including a crash in the esses on the final lap that topped off a 27th-place finish. Reddick struggled all night at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway, coming home 20th.
While he still feels like he has momentum from the summer, Reddick admitted that Kansas Speedway is a nice reset.
“It was definitely not a good first round for us,” Reddick said in a press conference Saturday. “Some of the handling issues that we had at tracks where normally it’s not an issue for us really set that in stone for the first round. I think we still could’ve scored decent points, especially the last two races. We were just missing things a little bit – made mistakes in qualifying on my behalf that put us back there and then were in that box where we have to get a little desperate or aggressive, if you will, to try and get some points out of it.
“We’re able to look at the results and understand why we were there. We’re not scratching our heads as to why we ran that bad. We know what caused it. Yeah, it is what it is. It stinks, but you get to reset and start over for this round where we were at the beginning.”
Using playoff points to his advantage – including the 15 acquired from the regular-season crown – Reddick advanced to the round of 12 by 23 markers. And after the reset, he starts as the No. 3 seed, 20 points above the cutline. That puts the two-time winner this season in a confident, but not comfortable position for the quarterfinal round.
Much like the first three races, the round of 12 contains two wild cards: a superspeedway and a road course. Rather than Atlanta Motor Speedway, it’s a trip to Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway. Instead of Watkins Glen (N.Y.) Int’l, it’s a home race in the Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL.
While the setup of the round could bring chaos, Reddick’s prepared for it. Three of his seven career victories have come at road courses and he’s the spring winner at Talladega.
“It will be that much more important to have solid races and that’s kind of what our foundation has been the majority of this year,” Reddick explained. “It will be nice to leave here with a win and not have to worry about the next two, but certainly our strengths has been about getting top fives and getting top 10s and scoring lot of points. If we do those things here, it will put us in a position where we’re not overly stressed going into Talladega and then the ROVAL.
“At the end of the day, they all pay the same amount of points, the same potential is out there to be had or lost every single race weekend.”
Reddick comes into this weekend at Kansas as the defending fall winner, but his No. 45 23XI Racing team didn’t have the same fortune in the spring. He missed it on his qualifying lap and hit the wall early, leading to significant damage and a 20th-place finish.
But with the second round of the playoffs set to begin, Reddick feels he should have a chance Sunday at Kansas.
“As we prepared for this coming weekend we weren’t panicked or any kind of freak out coming back here because the other Toyota’s ran good and we know where they’re at,” he said. “We’ve been very close. We’ve had winning speed and had that potential in years past, so we knew that we weren’t going to have to look at a lot of things to improve and change coming back.
“We can’t help but be really excited for this weekend in Kansas.”