All runs reach the finish line at some point, and Tyler Reddick’s streak came to an end Sunday at Phoenix Raceway. The 23XI Racing driver had opened the season with three straight wins, starting with the Daytona 500, followed by Atlanta, and then the Circuit of the Americas.
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Reddick and his team arrived in Phoenix with a shot at becoming the first driver since 2007 to win four Cup Series races in a row. The plan looked within reach for much of the afternoon, but when the race came down to the wire, trouble during pit cycles and track position left the team with a hill to climb.
The #45 driver started from eighth and kept his car in the hunt through the early stages, running near the front pack. He crossed the line in fourth at the end of Stage 1 and eighth at the close of Stage 2, picking up seven and three points along the way. By the end of the race, Reddick still walked away with 39 points on the day, the fourth-largest haul in the field behind race winner Ryan Blaney.
Speaking after the race, Reddick said the team kept chasing the right balance through the run. “Yeah, we just kind of found handling a little bit. It seemed like our Jordan brand toy Camry had good speed. It was just kind of back and forth on which direction we think we needed to go with our Camry, and so we kind of just hovered around fifth all day, and we took those two tires there.”
“It just got a little tight on us at the end. But all in all, yeah, would have been nice to make it four. But looking at the board over here, scored the fourth most amount of points on the day. That’s kind of what we need to just keep doing all year to keep the lead that we have and try and hang on to it. So yeah, just a solid day.
“These are if we’re not going to win, these are the kind of days we need to have, and glad to get out of here with some points,” he added.
A caution late in the race reshuffled the deck and opened the door for pit strategy to become the deciding factor. The yellow that denied Christopher Bell a shot at the win also helped Reddick gain ground when the No. 45 team chose two tires during a stop with 25 laps left. The call pushed him up to fourth when the field returned to green.
But as the laps wound down, his car began to tighten during the 12-lap dash to the stripe. Reddick said the team found itself boxed in, as four tires would have left him buried in traffic with little time to claw back.
The crew played the hand it had, and the race ran its course. However, although the streak came to a halt, Reddick still holds the lead in the NASCAR Cup Series standings with 225 points, carrying a 60-point edge over Phoenix winner Blaney as the season moves to its next stop at Las Vegas.
