It was never a matter of “if” Tyler Reddick would become a NASCAR Cup Series race winner. It was a matter of “when.”
The two-time Xfinity Series champion earned his first career Cup victory at Road America on Sunday. To do so, he beat NASCAR’s two most recent Cup champions — Chase Elliott and Kyle Larson. And he has all but locked Richard Childress Racing into the 2022 NASCAR Playoffs.
On the cool-down lap, Reddick’s former Truck Series team owner Brad Keselowski drove up next to him and was among the first to congratulate the Northern California native on his maiden win. On the television broadcast, one of Reddick’s former team owners from the Xfinity Series, Dale Earnhardt Jr., raved about his growth as a driver. And Larson, a fellow Northern California native and childhood friend of Reddick, embraced the RCR wheelman with a thumbs-up on the cool-down lap, as well.
Reddick’s victory is a popular one and, frankly, a highly-anticipated one. He was a runner-up five times in his young Cup career before finally taking the checkered flag.
Reddick’s path to becoming a winner at the top level of NASCAR is quite similar to Larson’s. When Larson became a full-timer, he drove for a solid team in Chip Ganassi Racing, which wasn’t quite championship material in the mid-2010s, but the entire industry knew he was destined to be a star once he was able to find himself going from a “B+” car to an “A” car.
That’s where Reddick stands now. Although he was a dominant force in the 2019 Xfinity Series season while driving for RCR, he hasn’t had that same speed translate to the Cup Series. Since Kevin Harvick’s departure after the 2013 season, the team has won only five Cup races. RCR has been able to snag the occasional win once or twice per season over the last five years, but to think the No. 3 or No. 8 cars are championship material right now seems far-fetched.
This weekend, Reddick told reporters he would return to RCR in 2023 for his fourth season in Cup. But he has acknowledged that 2024 is already worth thinking about now because what he does today will affect his tomorrow.
“Well, it’s a tough thing,” Reddick said. “It is far down the line, but you have to be thinking [about 2024]. You got to give as much as you can in the present and the now, but some of what happens in the present now is set up by what you do in the future. So, certainly thinking about that. And we’ll see. I got a little bit of time, I guess.”
Unless RCR can become a weekly contender at the front of the Cup Series grid in the next year and a half, it is hard to see Reddick sticking with the team. He’ll want to be in a car built to win championships because he knows he’s capable of winning them.
Elliott and Larson know as well as anyone in the garage that the first win is the most difficult to earn. Elliott’s first win was almost three years in the making, and like Reddick, he took P1 at a road course (Watkins Glen International, 2018), as well.
Elliott and Larson got their first race wins in their 99th start. Reddick got his in his 92nd.
“Congrats to him,” Elliott said. “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.”
“Congrats to Tyler Reddick,” Larson said. “That is really cool. I grew up racing with him in Outlaw cars in California, so it’s really awesome to see him win. I know everybody from Northern California is really proud.”
Reddick joins Austin Cindric, Chase Briscoe, Ross Chastain, and Daniel Suárez as first-time winners in 2022. NASCAR previously had five first-time winners three times in its history — 1950, 2002, and 2011. Never has there been six. Of the 32 full-time drivers in the field, only five haven’t won a Cup race yet. That would include Corey LaJoie, Harrison Burton, Todd Gilliland, Ty Dillon, and Cody Ware.
Thirteen drivers have won so far this season. And that isn’t including the Texas All-Star Race, which Ryan Blaney won. In this first season of the Next Gen car, NASCAR has enjoyed a level of parity that hasn’t been seen in a decade. And although this is a debate that happens every summer yet never comes to fruition; it feels like there could be 16 or more winners before the playoffs start.
Blaney hasn’t won a points race yet, and neither have former champions Martin Truex Jr. or Harvick. In fact, with Reddick’s win, Harvick now sits 17th in the playoff grid, which is the first position that won’t earn a postseason seed.
Harvick is only 20 points below the cutoff with eight races to go until the start of the Playoffs, but to think he could miss out would seem absurd for a driver of his talent. If the 2014 champion missed out, he would be the most shocking driver to not be in the postseason since 2017, when Joey Logano failed to qualify despite having a win at Richmond Raceway that season. That victory was infamously “encumbered,” it didn’t count towards his effort to make the top-16 in the standings.
Blaney, Truex, and Harvick still have two months to get a win. Aric Almirola has New Hampshire Motor Speedway circled on his calendar as he was last year’s winner there. And, of course, Daytona International Speedway will conclude the regular season, and that track is regarded as a wild card. Brad Keselowski could sneak a win there. As could Ricky Stenhouse Jr. or Erik Jones, who are also previous Daytona winners. Bubba Wallace has finished second at Daytona twice and was just inches away from a Daytona 500 championship five months ago when Cindric barely beat him to the finish line.
Also from this weekend:
-Larson made Hendrick Motorsports’ first Xfinity start in 13 years on Saturday when he drove the No. 17 today pay homage to the late Ricky Henrdick at Road America. He finished second to Toyota’s phenom Ty Gibbs, who is destined for great things in his NASCAR career. At age 19, the grandson of Joe Gibbs already has eight Xfinity wins. Like Reddick and Larson, it’s “when,” not “if” he will be a winner in the Cup Series.
-Ryan Newman won the Superstar Racing Experience event at Stafford Speedway in Connecticut on Saturday night. He passed Marco Andretti with four laps to go, earning the first triumph of his post-NASCAR racing career.
-Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz Jr. won his first Formula 1 Grand Prix on Sunday at Silverstone Circuit in England after capturing his first pole in his 150th race. This British Grand Prix was a wild one, which included a scary Lap-1 crash involving George Russell, Alex Albon, Yuki Tsunoda, and F1 rookie Zhou Guanyu. Zhou’s Alfa Romeo flipped upside down, made a heavy impact into the barriers in front of a grandstand, and got wedged between the barrier and catch fence. Zhou was OK, thankfully, as were the spectators sitting directly in his path on the other side of the fence.
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-IndyCar raced at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course on Sunday, and Team Penske’s Scott McLaughlin earned his second career win while his parents from New Zealand were present. Alex Palou and Will Power, who spun on Lap 1, rounded out the podium. Marcus Ericsson finished sixth and maintains the points lead as the series heads to Toronto in two weeks. It will be the first race in the Canadian city since 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic.
-Speaking of Canada, the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship ran on Sunday afternoon at Canadian Tire Motorsports Park. The No. 01 Cadillac DPi driven by Renger van der Zande and Sebastien Bourdais won the overall race. Van der Zande made the race-winning pass on the No. 60 Meyer Shank Racing with Curb-Agajanian Acura DPi, driven by Oliver Jarvis, with less than 10 minutes on the clock.
Next weekend, the ARCA Menards Series and the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series will run at Mid-Ohio. The Xfinity and Cup Series return to Atlanta Motor Speedway, and SRX will compete at the Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway. F1’s Austrian Grand Prix will take place Sunday at the Red Bull Ring.
