Written by Greg Atkins
CONCORD, N.C. – On a sweltering Saturday afternoon in Charlotte, Tyler Reddick claimed his second win of the season and his first victory at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
At a track he used to “hate,” Reddick stood out amongst the field by leading 110 of the race’s 200 laps.
Reddick commented in his post-race media availability, “This time around I remembered all the dumb things I’ve done in years prior. We stayed out of the wall and hats off to the guys for giving me a car I can win with. These guys worked really hard over the two week off period and made massive gains.”
“It’s an honor for me to jump on board in [Richard Childress Racing’s] 50th year and drive these race cars.”
Those gains were apparent today as Reddick won in dominant fashion to continue his strong start to the season.
Christopher Bell and Cole Custer started on the front row and battled valiantly for the top spot for several laps before Bell was able to pull away. Christopher Bell went on to win Stage 1. However, that would be the highlight of his day.
With only a handful of laps remaining in Stage 2, Bell and teammate Brandon Jones suffered tire failures, which virtually immediately ended Bell’s day. Jones rallied late, running as high as third before ultimately finishing 10th.
Tyler Reddick won Stage 2 and dominated Stage 3 en route to the victory. Stage 3, for the rest of the field, was full of incidents. Numerous drivers, such as Custer, John Hunter Nemechek, and Chase Briscoe made contact with the wall several times, which sometimes caused tire issues.
Reddick was the class of the field when it mattered most, as he has been for a considerable portion of the season. In addition to leading the points at this juncture of the season, this win at Charlotte was his second victory in his last three starts. It was also his ninth top-five finish in the first 11 races of the season. His lone finish outside the top-ten was a 14th place finish at Las Vegas in March.
Reddick is looking like an early favorite to defend his XFINITY Series championship. Although many pundits and fans will rate Christopher Bell as the odds-on favorite, Reddick has the championship pedigree at this level and even looks better than he did last year with JR Motorsports.
As far as what has changed since last year, Reddick stated, “I just honed in on what I needed to do better.”
As for what’s next for Reddick’s career? Apart from attempting to successfully defend his series championship, Richard Childress stated that Reddick would be in “a couple” more Cup races throughout the rest of the season.
Undoubtedly the story of the race, other than Tyler Reddick continuing his blistering start to the season, was the extreme temperatures.
The weather cultivated a challenging environment for both drivers and crews. The in-car temperatures approached 145 degrees and numerous drivers needed medical attention for fluids following the race.
Up next for the NASCAR XFINITY Series Pocono Green 250 Recycled by J.P. Mascaro & Sons at Pocono Raceway on June 1st.
