Tough Start to Round of 8 for Reddick, Elliott at Las Vegas

By David Morgan, Associate Editor

Lady Luck giveth and Lady Luck taketh away.

NASCAR Cup Series regular season champion Tyler Reddick looked as if he was in Lady Luck’s good graces early in Sunday’s South Point 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway after pocketing a stage win in the first stage of the race.

However, just as luck can change on a dime in a Las Vegas casino, the same happened for the driver of the No. 45 23XI Racing Toyota in the second stage when he found himself pinned on the outside in a three-wide battle off Turn 4 on Lap 90 when disaster struck.

With Reddick coming around the outside with a head of steam, Martin Truex, Jr. washed up into Chase Elliott, who then made contact with Reddick, pushing him into the outside wall. Reddick then spun back across the track and made contact with Brad Keselowski, who was an unsuspecting victim of the entire incident before skidding through the infield grass.

As Reddick took his trip through the grass, his car reached a portion of the quarter-mile oval that runs between pit road and the frontstretch and the transition between the grass and asphalt would get Reddick’s car up into the air, where it did a barrel roll over and back onto its wheels.

Through Reddick was able to drive his battered Camry back to pit road in short order, the damage to his machine was too much to fix and his day was done, leading to a 35^th place finish.

As a result, Reddick drops from 10 points over the cut off line to start the day to -30 when the checkered flag flew, putting him behind the eight-ball to start the semi-final round of the Playoffs.

He’ll have work to do next week at Homestead and the following week at Martinsville if he is to be one of the four drivers fighting for the championship at Phoenix to close out the season.

“You just have to be aggressive on restarts. It’s how the Next Gen racing has been from the beginning. I kind of saw them both have a moment, and I just had to split second make a decision,” said Reddick.

“You have to be aggressive on the restart. It is hard to pass after a while. Being myself on a mile and a half, being aggressive – by the time I realized I was in trouble, the 19 (Martin Truex Jr.) started sliding and the 9 (Chase Elliott) was coming up and I was pretty much already on their outside at that point, with nowhere to really go.

“I needed to make the decision earlier when I saw them sliding to be more conservative to avoid an incident – just not who I am, but it is unfortunate. It took us out of the race. We had a really, really fast Jordan Brand Toyota Camry, probably would have been in the mix all race long, but we will go to Homestead – a place where I have had to get it done before and go for it there.”

In the same incident that took Reddick out of the race, Elliott was able to get his car repaired enough to make minimum speed and clear the Damaged Vehicle Policy clock, but there were still issues with his No. 9 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet that needed to be fixed for him to not be a rolling road block for the remainder of the day.

Elliott would take his car behind the wall for repairs and return to the race numerous laps later, but by then the damage had been done. He just had to spend the rest of the race logging laps, where he would finish the day in 33^rd place, some 27 laps down.

The 2020 Cup champion now falls to the bottom of the Playoff drivers, sitting 53 points back with two races to go in the round – practically must-win territory at either Homestead or Martinsville.

The No. 45 was coming with a really big run on the top. I don’t think Martin knew that, and he was kind of running as if we were two-wide. Once I recognized that there wasn’t going to be enough room, I bailed and there was just nowhere to bail,” said Elliott.

“It was too late. I need to sit down and take a look at it. I was, personally, just trying to get out of the situation and it was just a little too late at that point.

“It sucks. Our No. 9 NAPA Chevy was really, really good there at the start. It was the best we’ve been out here in this new car, so it was just a bad day for that.”