By David Morgan, Associate Editor
SPEEDWAY, Ind. – The Beast is most definitely Unleashed.
For the second day in a row, Tyler Reddick and his No. 45 Beast Unleashed Toyota Camry has found its way to the top of the timing sheet, this time Reddick’s lap of 49.469 seconds, 181.932 mph was enough to earn him the pole for the Brickyard 400.
“I was one of the last cars to go in Group B, so I watched a lot of drivers in Round one have issues in Turn 4 and a couple of other areas on the race track. It definitely seemed like it was easy to overstep the boundaries,” Reddick said.
“I wanted to put down a good lap in that first round – and it was a very solid lap. We knew we had a solid car, and it was going to be important to make the right adjustments and back it up in round two. We had a little bit of pace fall off in round two from round one at first, but nevertheless, I thought we did a good job with the adjustments, and we were able to lay a lap down good enough to claim the pole.”
Reddick would unseat his 23XI Racing team owner Denny Hamlin from the top spot with his lap, bumping Hamlin to the outside of the front row for Sunday’s race.
“Well, if I tear it up, he’s paying for it (laughs). It’s his car,” Reddick said of going against Hamlin from the front row. “I try not to use that against him. I honestly feel like we race each other very fair, but hard. I’ve learned a lot about racing from him as well.
“I feel like we have a good level of trust and respect for one another, but obviously, when we come to a place like this (Indianapolis Motor Speedway), I know how badly he wants to win here. And I know how bad I want to win here. It’ll just be something we’ll have to manage throughout the day, and we’ll just see how it goes.
“Obviously, he and the 11 team are stout. The 5 (Kyle Larson), the 9 (Chase Elliott), those are guys that have been good all year long. But yeah, I wonder if that’s something he thinks about while we’re racing. Like ‘man, if he uses me up?’ Is he thinking about fixing up his race car or worried about his race?”
Chase Elliott will start third, followed by his Hendrick Motorsports teammates William Byron and Kyle Larson to round out the top-five.
The remainder of the top-10 starters on Sunday will be Ty Gibbs, Ryan Blaney, last year’s winner on the Indianapolis road course Michael McDowell, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., and John Hunter Nemechek.
Battle for the Bubble
With 12 of 16 spots in the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs already claimed by race winners, it is setting up a very interesting final five races of the regular season among those not yet locked in.
As it stands now, Martin Truex, Jr. is the best of the bunch with a +137 advantage over the cut-off line, so he should be safe to either win his way in or have enough points in reserve to make it in on points.
He’ll have his work cut out for him this weekend to make any progress after a post-qualifying penalty.
Behind him, the battle is raging among those not yet in the postseason, with slim margins among those hovering right around the cut-off line.
Ty Gibbs seemed as safe as Truex a week ago, but a blown engine at Pocono has him just 67 points ahead. Should we have a new winner in the next five races or if he runs into more trouble, he could be in danger of being on the outside looking in when the checkered flag falls on the regular season.
Next up is Chris Buescher at +44 over the cut-off. The driver of the No. 17 RFK Racing Ford has come close to victory on a number of occasions this season, only to have it snatched from his grasp, most notably in the photo finish with Kyle Larson at Kansas.
Despite all that, confidence is high in Buescher’s camp that he’ll be able to join team owner Brad Keselowski in the Playoffs when all is said and done.
“I’ll say we have great tracks coming up for us, but also it hasn’t been one of those years where we felt like we haven’t been competitive and then just really picked up in the summer like we did last year. We weren’t where we needed to be for eight or 10 races at the beginning of the year. That’s not our case this year,” Buescher said.
“We’ve been very good at a lot of places. It’s just we gotta close a deal. You know, we’ve been very close at a lot of different times throughout the season so far. A lot of different styles of race tracks. For us, it’s that last 5%, like we’re right there. We’re in the hunt.
“At a lot of different races throughout this year, we’ve been in contention to win a handful of them. So, you know, for us, it’s a lot of good racetracks coming up. They’ve all been good racetracks for us this year with a very small exception.”
Rounding out the current drivers in the top-16 is Ross Chastain, who has won his way into the Playoffs in each of the past two seasons, including a run to the Championship 4 in 2022. However, for whatever rhyme or reason, the No. 1 Trackhouse Racing team has been unable to find its way to Victory Lane in 2024.
As a result, Chastain is on the verge of possibly not making the Playoffs for the first time since the 2021 season, just 27 points up over the cut-off line.
For Chastain, it’s all about the going for the win and trying to make it in to the Playoffs that way, even if it has a chance to bite him in the points race.
“Win,” Chastain said of his focus for this weekend. “Absolutely, and once you get the lead it’ll be very rewarding. So, I know there’ll be times where I won’t have the tires I want or will be really low on fuel, trying to make our number to get fuel number to get to the next stop or to get to another window that’ll open for us. There will be some painful moments, but if you hold onto the track position, it’s very rewarding.
He added that he isn’t thinking of the points behind the wheel, he’s just driving the car and leaving all of the strategy plays up to his team on the pit box.
“I don’t think about that honestly, and I’m being honest when I tell you that,” Chastain said. “If I was thinking about that, I probably wouldn’t have wrecked last week. I’m just trying to drive the race car. Trackhouse and Phil Surgeon and GM as a whole with Chevy, they make all those decisions and they see the bigger picture.
“The big track here for the Brickyard 400 or IRP last night with Phil Goulding. He asked me something about pitting. I said, man, I don’t know. That’s up to you. I’ll tell you what I feel and I’m driving the race car.”
On the outside looking in is Bubba Wallace, who seems to have lived his Playoff life on the bubble each year, with it coming down to the wire to determine whether he’ll make it in or not.
Last year, he was able to squeak in during the final race of the regular season, making a run to the second round of the Playoffs before getting knocked out, so Wallace and the team were optimistic that performance would translate into 2024, but just haven’t been able to find their way thus far.
“All four really good tracks coming up for us, but it’s just a matter if we show up with our heads in the game and ready to work and battle,” Wallace said of the final sprint of the regular season.
“Definitely got our workout out for us. Last week’s race was a decent points day for us, but we’re still out. Bottom line, we’re still out. So, we’ve got a lot of work to do. A win in these next four would be great. I’d be in a lot better mood, but yeah, we’ll see.”
From Chase Briscoe (-75) on back, it will most likely take a win to punch a ticket into the postseason. Among those drivers is Kyle Busch, Josh Berry, Michael McDowell, Noah Gragson, Ricky Stenhouse, Jr. and others.
“We’ve got to be better, right? We’ve had a couple opportunities at New Hampshire and Nashville to win and came up a little bit short,” said Briscoe.
“We’re in that weird spot where we could maybe potentially point our way in, but realistically, we probably have to win, which, at a place like this I think is nice to know that you’re in that must-win situation because you can just get super aggressive with strategy where if we were 20 points out of the cut line or something we would probably have to play it a little more conservative.
“Where we’re at right now, we can be really aggressive with strategy. That’s what Boswell and all the guys will try to do. We definitely feel like we’re in a must-win territory with how we kind of ran and the stage points and things like that. It’s probably going to be hard to point our way in.”
Connect with Us
To RSS Feed
Followers
Likes