“It Feels Sketchy”: Tyler Reddick on How Sonoma Repave Falls Into His NASCAR Wheelhouse

23XI Racing driver Tyler Reddick is one of the drivers to look out for this weekend as NASCAR prepares to race at the Sonoma Raceway. The #45 Toyota Camry XSE driver is regarded as one of the best road course racers in the field currently. Reddick clinched his first-ever Cup Series victory at another road course, Road America, during the 2022 season and aims to achieve the same result this Sunday.

Speaking his mind on how the recent repaving of the facility has ramped up grip levels for the drivers, Reddick elaborated on how it has also made the cars run on more of a knife’s edge.

He said, “It feels sketchy at times, but when it sticks it’s fun, yeah. When you lose grip it’s not good. But when you get stepped out of shape through the esses coming back down in turn 10, turn 10 is going to be a place I feel like gets a few people over the course of the weekend.”

The 28-year-old also touched on how he thinks he has managed to close the gap to other drivers, especially on road courses over the past season. Driving a car and wheeling it on the knife edge is also a skill few drivers on the field do as well as Reddick or Kyle Larson.

He added to the same and how it falls into his style of driving and said, “To a degree, yeah. We still gotta work on our car and try to find some things. I definitely think it helps. In the past year, it’s just added another element that some of the vets were a little better at than I was at road courses. Now, for the most part I think that’s going to be gone to some degree.”

Where did Tyler Reddick and teammate Bubba Wallace finish during Friday’s practice session at Sonoma?

The weekend did not kick off in the most favorable way for the 23XI Racing drivers as both the #45 and #23 cars finished with P30 and P22 on the board respectively.

While practice sessions are an early indication of how the team is going to perform during the remaining weekend, it does not necessarily mean both Toyotas owned by Denny Hamlin and Michael Jordan are expected to be underperforming.

Bubba Wallace’s recent performances at road courses also paint a positive picture as he aims to compliment his teammate’s road course racing prowess. It remains to be seen how the #45 and #23 crews gather data from the newly resurfaced track and tune their setups to allow their drivers to attack the fresh tarmac.