A look inside the race for the NASCAR Championship

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On Thursday at Phoenix Raceway, Tyler Reddick began one of the biggest weekends of his career: his first true shot at a NASCAR Cup Series championship. Forty drivers showed up to Phoenix, yet all but the Championship Four — Reddick, William Byron, and past Cup champions Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney — were eliminated from title contention. The highest Champ Four finisher in the race on Sunday would win the title.

Reddick’s title hunt came at the end of a tense week. He was the only Toyota left, since his 23XI team owner, Denny Hamlin, got eliminated on points at Martinsville Speedway, and his manufacturer teammate, Christopher Bell, was in the Championship Four for 27 minutes before getting removed for a safety violation. Byron took his place, despite allegations of race manipulation in favor of both of them. All the while, 23XI was in court with NASCAR, leaving the team’s future in jeopardy.

After doing race promotion all afternoon, Reddick walked over to me for an interview about the championship. We got derailed, as we usually do, and spent 10 minutes talking about JDM cars instead. I ask about his season, he tells me about a recent meme he saw that said movie critics use “slow burn” when they mean “boring” (I saw it too), and I eventually get to my last interview question.

“Don’t jinx yourself,” I said. “But how do you feel about Sunday?”

Reddick sat back, exhaled, and visibly relaxed.

“Really good,” he responded. “I feel really good about it.”

The making of a champion(ship contender)

NASCAR’s modern championship format for all of its national series (Cup, Xfinity and Truck) is an elimination playoff. In the Cup Series, the playoffs begin with 16 drivers. They span 10 races and four rounds; the first three elimination rounds have three races each, and the final round comes down to four drivers and one race. For this year, that race is Phoenix, and the highest finisher from the Championship Four there wins the title. A win in one round automatically sends a driver to the next, and the other spots are filled by points.

Reddick made the eight-driver round this year and wrecked himself in its first race in Las Vegas. It tanked his points position and almost killed his chance at the title. But these days, Reddick told me he’s better at separating his home life from his performance on track.

“I feel like when I was a lot younger, I wouldn’t turn that off,” Reddick said. “If it was something bad, I would drag that back home or back to the bus. Over time, I’ve gotten better about being at peace with what has happened, good or bad. I move along and allow myself to be present with my family.

“There is a point at which you can overthink yourself to death and not change anything, especially when it’s something negative. It’s important to learn from it and acknowledge it, but if you dwell on it, I just don’t think it’s healthy.”

Champion Tyler Reddick, Richard Childress Racing, Chevrolet Camaro TAME the BEAST

Photo by: Matthew T. Thacker / NKP / Motorsport Images

But remember, Reddick is a two-time champ in the second-tier Xfinity Series, securing both by winning at one of his best tracks: the 1.5-mile Homestead-Miami Speedway oval. While Xfinity isn’t the Cup Series, the experience brought him into this weekend well prepared.

“It feels so similar to when I did this when I was racing in Xfinity,” Reddick told me. “I know it’s the Cup Series. I’m racing against Cup champions. It’s at Phoenix instead of Homestead. But just the feeling, the mindset, where I’m at internally going into it, all feels very aligned with those other Championship Four appearances. It just kind of came naturally.”

Modern NASCAR: Win and you’re in

Reddick knew he had to win the next race at Homestead-Miami to make the Championship Four. He was third with two laps to go. Ahead were Hamlin and Blaney, both in the same situation: If they won, they automatically qualified for the Championship Four.

On the last lap, Reddick slid by Hamlin in the low lane in Turns 1 and 2, then catapulted past Blaney in the high lane in Turns 3 and 4 to win. His last-lap speed defied logic, and It was a finish for the history books. But during it, Reddick’s mind was on another plane.

“I just … I ended up there,” Reddick said. “I don’t know how to explain it. People talk about getting in the zone, and it felt like one of those types of things where you lock in, it happens, it’s over, and you’re like: ‘What just happened?’ That’s what it felt like, where time’s moving so fast, but at the same time, it’s not moving. It’s really trippy stuff.”

Race winner Tyler Reddick, 23XI Racing, The Beast Killer Sunrise Toyota Camry

Photo by: NASCAR Media

Reddick told me the hardest part of the NASCAR playoffs is on display once the field is down to eight drivers. Three playoff contenders won all three races in the Round of Eight, leaving one spot to qualify for the Championship Four on points. That final spot became such a dogfight that, a week later in Phoenix, everyone was still red-hot from the controversy.

“It’s hard to win in the Cup Series, and it pretty much was something you had to do to give yourself a decent shot at being here,” Reddick says. “You look at how William [Byron], Denny [Hamlin], and Bell performed at these races we had, and they were very, very strong. Kyle [Larson], you look at all the playoff points he had, right? You’d think, ‘Okay, he’s good to go all the way through.’

“But in the Round of Eight, it can get out of your control so fast if you don’t win.”

The win gave 23XI an extra week to prepare for Phoenix. After Homestead, Reddick thought about the big picture: his chance at a career-defining first Cup championship.

“I allowed myself to think about it, take it in,” Reddick says. “I absorbed that information, to then be ready to focus back in on what I need to do on the preparation side. It all felt like it happened really naturally. I didn’t have to force myself to think about this or not think about that. Everything’s just kind of falling in place. It feels as it should.”

Other factors in Phoenix: The car, strategy, and pit performance

But a championship is about more than a driver’s mindset; it’s also about the team and car. I asked Reddick’s crew chief, Billy Scott, what this weekend is like for him. He kept it practical.

“Normally, we only go through tech [inspection by the NASCAR officials] one time,” Scott said. “Our cars are basically impounded, which means there are very limited adjustments we can make throughout the weekend. We go through a 20-minute practice session right into qualifying, then it’s overnight until the race.

“This weekend, since it is the final playoff race, we go through tech when we get here, but the cars are not impounded yet. It’s just for us to get a read on where everything is. Then, we have a full practice session: 50 minutes, multiple sets of tires, and you can pretty much change anything on the car that you want to or have time to. It’s just a lot more time in the garage, a lot more opportunity to adjust on stuff, and more trips to tech.”

Scott prefers a shorter weekend format. It rewards 23XI’s pre-race preparation, he said, and it gives others less time “to science things out” based on practice speeds. But in Phoenix, 23XI had three cars in the lab: Reddick’s No. 45, Wallace’s No. 23, and Hamlin’s No. 11.

JR Houston, a friend of mine and an engineer on Wallace’s car, told me the primary goal for 23XI at Phoenix was a championship. To do that, all three cars arrived with similar setups, letting the team work as a hive mind on adjustments and driving techniques for Reddick.

“I would say 90% of our weekend is focused on making sure they’re getting everything they need,” Houston said. “If we find something that makes the car faster, we tell them about it, then we both get faster. If they get everything they need, we are going to perform well, and vice versa.”

Tyler Reddick, 23XI Racing, The Beast Unleashed Toyota Camry

Photo by: Matthew T. Thacker / NKP / Motorsport Images

NASCAR teams use off-track time to debrief, discuss adjustments, and analyze data. A lot of data comes from a system called SMT, which shows graphs and animations of the speed, revs, shifting, braking, throttle, steering, delta time, and driving line run by any car. Each weekend, Reddick’s team can see where other cars gain and lose time relative to him, and other teams can see the same for Reddick.

But the car’s speed is only part of the race. Another is pit road, where teams of five change tires and add fuel in the 8- to 10-second range. A pit-crew member’s sole job is going as fast as possible, and before the race, they spray sticky traction compounds in their pit boxes to help drivers launch.

Pit road itself is like a long, nose-to-tail parking lot, with a few empty spots. Teams choose pit boxes in order of performance, and pitting near empty spots causes less stress.

“The biggest thing for us is having an opening,” Scott tells me. “If you have an opening on the way out, you control your own destiny the most. And as long as you’re running in front of the car [pitted] behind you, it should make it to where it’s easy to get on and off pit road.”

Scott is also responsible for race strategy, which can change depending on car performance and the timing of cautions. NASCAR teams can take two tires, four tires, no tires, scuff tires, new tires — a bunch of combinations — during a race. They can also pit early or late, depending on how it’ll impact speed and track position when they exit pit road.

The season finale in Phoenix is 312 laps, and Cup cars can run 95 laps on a tank of fuel. A “short run” in the Cup car at Phoenix maxes out at about 30 laps due to tire degradation: Tires wear more harshly during that time, then plateau and degrade much more slowly for the long run to 95.

“It’s important to have long-run speed,” Scott told me. “If you’ve got that, you’ll be okay.”

The ups and downs of championship weekend

On Friday, Reddick ran the 21st-fastest lap in practice — the fourth of four championship cars. Blaney led, Byron ran fourth, and Logano ninth. Hamlin and Wallace, in similar cars to Reddick, ran eighth and 11th, respectively. They spent the night working to close the gap.

“Throughout practice, if the driver’s fighting a certain handling condition, we’ll mark down laps,” Houston told me. “When we debrief, we’re not sitting there looking through 60 laps of data. We’re looking for this very specific example of when they did something either similar or different and how it affected their corner.

“In practice, Bubba was a little more comfortable with the car. We debriefed for an hour about how the cars felt different, and because they’re so similar, we know that it’s the drivers making the difference. By being similar, we can teach each other.”

The next day, Reddick clocked 10th in qualifying — a massive improvement. Logano qualified second, Byron eighth, and Blaney 17th.

“We know what we need to work on, and we’ve been talking about it and coming up with a plan for Sunday,” Reddick told the media after qualifying. “I have a good sense of what I need to be focused on, and how we as a team need to keep up with the race car. But obviously, we have to wait and see how the race goes.”

On Sunday’s pre-race grid, minutes before the cars rolled off pit road, Reddick’s friends and family hugged him and wished him luck. That’s normal in NASCAR: Drivers are swarmed, with no time alone, until they step into the car.

Reddick fired off 10th, then spent the first part of the race there. He was strategically aggressive on restarts, and his pit stops were consistent all day. By normal standards, it was a great performance. But by championship standards, Reddick lacked the long-run speed the other Championship Four cars had.

There were only four cautions in the race: one for an early wreck, two planned ones for stage breaks, and one for a crash on lap 251 of 312. The final green-flag run lasted more than 50 laps, and during it, Blaney charged from several seconds behind his teammate, Logano, to Logano’s back bumper. Logano held Blaney off to win a third Cup championship, while Byron finished third in the race and Reddick sixth.

On a normal day, sixth is great. In the championship, it’s not enough.

“We did all that we could, I think,” Reddick told the media in a post-race press conference. “But it’s tough when they just get further and further away over time. We put up a good fight. We didn’t make any mistakes that took ourselves out of it. We fought as hard as we could. We made the car better throughout the day. We did what we needed to do.

“Unfortunately, we just didn’t quite have the speed or restarts we needed to get ahead and hold those guys up, or really put up a fight there at the very end.”

William Byron, Hendrick Motorsports, Joey Logano, Team Penske, Ryan Blaney, Team Penske, Tyler Reddick, 23XI Racing

Photo by: NASCAR Media

Reddick stepped off the press-conference stage, walked by, and gave me a half-smile that says: “I tried my best.” I nodded — “I know you did” — and remembered what he told me about the championship on Thursday.

“You just have to come to terms with it, whatever the outcome,” Reddick said. “If you win the championship, it’s a great thing. But there’s a three-in-four chance that it doesn’t happen, and you have to be able to come to terms with that. I think you can do that if you go into this weekend knowing you’ve prepped all you can prep, covered all your bases, and made sure all the details are where they need to be.

“Yes, it’s hard to walk away from a weekend if it doesn’t work out. But it’ll allow us to digest it better knowing that we have no regrets. We did everything that we could do to win it.”