With $1 million on the line for the eventual winner of NASCAR’s inaugural In-Season Challenge, you’d think Tyler Reddick would be on the offensive and send an intimidating message to his rival in the semifinal, Ty Gibbs.
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Heading into Sunday’s race at Dover, the semifinals pit Reddick and Gibbs on one end of the ladder and surprise underdog Ty Dillon up against John Hunter Nemechek. The higher-finishing driver from each of these two battles will advance to the final round next Sunday at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
The 23rd seed Reddick beat Kyle Larson, Carson Hocevar and Ryan Preece in the three previous rounds, while 6th seed Gibbs beat Justin Haley, AJ Allmendinger and Zane Smith.
During media availability on Saturday at Dover, Reddick spoke about being ready to race with Gibbs on Sunday but didn’t see the need for any changes.
“The last three weeks I feel like we’ve raced around each other a bunch, so I don’t know if I’m going to need any (changes),” Reddick said. “I don’t know where I saw the stat somewhere on X, we’ve (Gibbs and myself) ran like 490 laps within two or three spots of each other, or something like that.
“It does feel like every time I’ve been at Dover since Ty (Gibbs) has been in the Cup Series, I can at least see him on the track when I’m making laps. Last year, I finished directly behind him, so I feel like that is going to continue. I feel like we are going to be around each other a lot this weekend. Hopefully, we will have some good hard racing.”
Reddick has been on a roll of late
Reddick has been on a roll throughout the Challenge: he hasn’t finished lower than sixth in any of its three races so far. That bodes well not only for Sunday but also for his bid to win that cool million bucks if he gets past Gibbs and makes it to the final round at Indianapolis.
But he also doesn’t want to look too far ahead. His only focus right now is and has to be finishing higher than Gibbs at Dover. “It would be great (to win the big prize),” Reddick said.
“I feel like I’m too busy to think about what I would even do with it, but nonetheless it would be great to have and once I have some free time, maybe if I get some free time during the week, I can think about what I would spend it on. But if anything, you can just put it away and maybe have some fun with the money during the off-season.”
But Gibbs has been no slouch himself. He and Reddick have finished within one position of each other in the last two races and have finished within three spots of each other in five of the last 11 races.
At Dover in particular, Reddick’s best finish is seventh in 2023, while Gibbs’ best showing at the one-mile all-concrete oval was 10th last year.
