Toyota Racing – Tyler Reddick
NASCAR Cup Series Quotes
CHARLOTTE (September 4, 2024) – 23XI Racing driver Tyler Reddick was made available to the media on Wednesday as part of the NASCAR Cup Series Playoff Media Day.
TYLER REDDICK, No. 45 The Beast Unleashed Toyota Camry XSE, 23XI Racing
Is there more pressure now to cap off this season after you earned the regular season title?
“I don’t know if there is more pressure. Just as you get closer and closer to Phoenix, I think it just builds naturally – the longer you are in it, the better shot you have, so you kind of have to understand the moment and you have to set-up and perform and execute each weekend. This first round presents its challenges, but there are 16 of us – all in this together – if one of us has a bad day, there will probably be three or four of us that will too. Hopefully, we can weather the bad days and just not have them – that’s has been our strong suit – when things happen around us and we miss it. We will just see how it goes.”
Do you have a sense of being a favorite?
“Maybe the numbers show that, but I don’t think we are carrying ourselves around like we are the baddest group around. I think we just do a good job of each individual on the team doing their part throughout the week – we just show up to the race track and we have a good amount of focus and we do a really good job of getting the results that we need, even on the days that we have issue – that has been a nice thing about this year, a number of times, countless times it feels like, we have things not go our way and we have been able to fight through it and still get the results.”
Were you ever going to get out of the car in Darlington?
“Um, someone was going to probably going to have to pull me out of the car. (laughter) Hopefully, it didn’t come to that. I don’t know. We had thought about it. Having Corey (Heim) on standby, and 10:30 in the morning came around, and the worst of it was behind me, so I really thought I was going to be okay. Leading up to the race, getting in the car was the best that I had felt in days, and just once we got going with that extended period of time with the heat and the bumps off of (turn) two – I think that was a lot of it. It started going a really bad direction during the race.”
Were you sick all week?
“I started feeling bad on Friday, and Sunday morning I was feeling pretty solid about it – thought I was going to be fine, and yeah, it was not done yet.”
Was it all false alarm?
“I honestly didn’t go back and watch the broadcast. I can hardly remember sections of the race, I was so out of it at times, but as I remember it, I thought Billy (Scott, crew chief) was asking me – if I was more worried about puking or the other – whatever you want to call it. I think he was asking me what I was more worried about, but truly I thought at any moment I was going to have both. I genuinely tried to go – I tried to let it out, but I took too much IMODIUM earlier in the day to keep it at bay, and that was probably what made it so awful – stuff was trying to get out of my body one way or another, and it couldn’t go out that way.”
Is it safe for you to be in the car feeling that poorly?
“I wasn’t 100 percent, but I didn’t lose consciousness. I didn’t take someone out during caution or make some crazy moves on the race track to take anyone else out, so I think I was in a good enough frame of mine to be okay, but I feel like Darlington is one of my best tracks. I feel like if it is places like Chicago or some of these other tracks that we go to in the future that we may not know as well, that is different. I don’t think – I wasn’t 100 percent – but you can still be somewhat there and do your job.”
Were you 100 percent celebrating your championship trophy?
“It took all day Monday and some of yesterday to start feeling better.”
Was Beau sick?
“Yeah, he was sick last week. I think that is where it came from.”
Have you looked at the reseeded points and just the value of those 15 bonus points?
“I guess, I didn’t really think about where I would have been if I had run second or third on the regular season, but it is good to see where we are at. I know we gave away at least 12 Playoff points at some point during the year, but I think everybody else that is a part of that conversation with me, Christopher (Bell) and Kyle (Larson) could all say the same. I think we are in a good spot. I learned pretty quickly a month or so ago, when we were trying to close in on the 9 (Chase Elliott), the 5 (Larson) and the 11 (Denny Hamlin) – that when you all are running around the same spot, it is hard to gain four, five, six points on a weekend. It is good to have these extra Playoff points.”
How much do you want to win a Cup Championship?
“It is the whole reason I’m doing this, so pretty bad.”
Do you think it is within your reach?
“I think with the way this format is, even last year, it was within our reach. We had two great opportunities at mile-and-a-halves to lock ourselves in and avoid having to race in in Martinsville, just the way this format is, you could be having an off year or just an okay year, and still have a really good shot at it.”
What do you have to do to make it to Phoenix?
“As good as any. There are a few points differences between a few of us, but we all have the opportunity to go out and win races and lock ourselves into the next round until the Championship 4. They are good odds for sure.”
What are your thoughts on the first round of the Playoffs?
“It is probably the most chaotic – that first round. I would almost argue that Talladega, the ROVAL – that second round could be too. Each of those rounds pose their dangers. The nice thing is there are 16 of us in this first round, so even if you have a bad day, you have a good buffer and there are a lot of cars that could have average days. I think the mindset that we’ve had all year is going to be a good one for these Playoffs.”
What was winning the Regular Season Championship like back at Airspeed this week?
“It was nice to be able to celebrate it, but we understand what we have ahead of us. Really cool moment with how young 23XI is, and it just great to be a part of it.”
How different will Bristol be?
“It seems like it will be that way again. That is what it seems like.”
How do you drive Bristol now?
“Honestly, we got in that wreck on lap 40 when we stayed out – we got a bunch of damage. I was kind of stuck behind cars running a pace, multiple laps down at the tail of the field, and I was able to drive my way up to 15th– I was kind of doing it every stage with a destroyed race car, and at the very end, I got kind of hung up behind cars with completely corded tires and next thing I knew Martin (Truex) and Denny (Hamlin) were right there with me and even with a wrecked race car, I felt like we were pretty good. We weren’t racing for much of anything that Bristol race, but I was really pleased with how fast our car was with how much damage we had. I think Bristol could be a really good race for us.”
What is going to make Watkins Glen so different with the tire?
“I don’t think you will be running to the end of your fuel window. We will probably be putting on tires more, so it is going to play out more like Darlington – I guess that is the hope, I guess – that people will try to short pit and jump people. You will see people go to optimum or go long if they have good long run speed to be able to pass cars on the back side of a run. I don’t know truly how it will play out, but I feel like it will certainly change up how you strategize things. Two laps are two laps, but I do think people will probably at some point forgoes stage points, but you will certainly have to fight really hard to keep them behind you.”
Is Beau old enough to understand what is going on right now?
“I think he knows what is going on, for sure. He’s only four. He hasn’t been around for the whole process of getting to this point. I would say from the time he was born, I was only racing in Cup, so that is all he has seen me to do. I think he understands it. I think as he gets older, he will understand better, how hard it is to get to this spot. He sees what I do and he loves it and he wants to do it really bad. He definitely sees the fun and enjoyment that you can get out of it. It is really cool, and it’s a fun opportunity to watch my kid grow up and learn more and more about it and know the racing better and watch him learn and pick up on things that we are doing on Sundays.”
Is there a bet for this Playoffs?
“No kid in the works that I know of (laughter). I don’t know. I try dangle prizes out in front of my self, if you will – if I win this or I win that, I will get this car, or this watch or I will buy property or something like that. It’s always fun to give yourself mini goals. It is important to have it. There are a lot of reasons to be motivated to win a championship, but it probably just depends on where you are at in life. Years ago, when I was at JR Motorsports, I almost needed to get away from things to recenter my focus. That second year, when I was going for it with RCR (Richard Childress Racing), it was a little different, just like things are now. I think things change as you get older, and things in life change around you.”
Have you and your team gone through what could happen with the tires at Bristol?
“I think it is something that we’ve been talking about. I’m sure the whole garage is – team wise. We are just thinking about how we showed up, how our fellow Toyota drivers showed up and coming up with our game plan on where we think we need to have our car setup for, what kind of balance that we think will be important, what kind of pace is going to be – just kind of trying to nail those things down, so we can give ourselves the best shot. I feel like we went in on the weekend really, really aggressive because typically there, you don’t wear tires out that quick. I thought our car – even with all of the damage – held on better than those around me with no damage. Those things give me a lot of confidence going into that week – that if we keep our car clean, I think we will be in the mix.”
How do you beat Hendrick at Watkins Glen?
“It will be different this time. In the past, it’s just been about qualifying and having a car runs a really fast pace for the entire fuel run – there is not a lot of tire fall off – you get out in clean air, and you run the same lap over and over and over. It will be different this time, so hopefully, some of the knowledge that we’ve gathered from the tire test that we’ve had, the wheelforce test – it does seem like we are in a pretty good spot with all of that.”
If you get to Phoenix, will you have some form of satisfaction?
“Winning the championship is the goal, but if you can just keep getting yourself to Phoenix and into that Championship 4, you are going to continue to put yourself in position for it to work out. Christopher (Bell) surprised a lot of us at Phoenix in the beginning of the year. We started that race off, and I felt like we were the best car, and he just figured it out and came to life in the second half of the race and ran away with it. I feel like we are close, and we can learn from what they did, and certainly, a few days removed from that race at the beginning of the year, I had a good mindset of where we need to be going back.”
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