TOYOTA RACING – Tyler Reddick
NASCAR Cup Series Quotes
Austin (February 28, 2026) – 23XI Racing driver Tyler Reddick was made available to the media on Saturday following his pole winning run for tomorrow’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Circuit of Americas in Austin, Texas.
TYLER REDDICK, No. 45 Chumba Casino Toyota Camry XSE, 23XI Racing
What was the difference with what you saw in practice and what you were able to do in qualifying?
“I was more so just trying to understand what the car would be like over the course of the run. I would have liked to have fired on a fast lap, but it wasn’t super high priority in practice for us. Funny enough, I realized that was kind of our approach to practice and we said, we’re sitting there getting ready to go qualify and I was like, man, we haven’t pushed this thing once that hard on fresh tires. I just kind of had to find my marks and somehow I did it without doing a practice run.”
Does this qualifying run help your prospects of winning three straight races to start the season?
“It helps the chances certainly, starting up front is huge. We did the same thing last year. We need to maintain that and hang onto it this time around. It certainly helps, you know? Obviously, I think the run under green and everything is pretty even, but certainly if things kind of get off sequence and pit road gets busy I’m going to have first choice and it’s nice to have in the race. We’ll see how it gets going. Ross (Chastain), Shane (Van Gisbergen), Ryan Blaney, there’s a number of drivers that were really strong in practice today. We’ll just try to understand what all that looks like and make our best decisions on the car overnight going into tomorrow’s race.”
Does winning the pole and starting up front change any strategy for tomorrow?
“It will be something that will be talked about and considered. I think our team does a great job on the preparation side for these races and where we start plays into that. So there will be discussions, I’m sure, that will continue to happen here in a little bit and even into tomorrow morning. I don’t know which way we will go at this moment, but certainly we kind of give ourselves more options starting towards the front, especially if we get off to a good start and as the field spreads out and if we’re leading, it gives us choices.”
How do you manage the tire wear and heat in the tires when you are running up on the curbs all race with a new tire at this track for the first time?
“Honestly, it’s something we do every week. Most of the time we are doing it on ovals, but a lot of these things you have to deal with week in and week out. Yeah, we’re coming here to COTA and it’s a real road course and we ran through those things over the years and expanded on that. For me, tomorrow it’s another race we’ve got to execute and certainly the changes their there, but we’ve had some time in practice and qualifying to kind of understand that. I kind of understand that. This is the first time we ran this tire here. We have all those things to consider as we approach the day tomorrow. We’ll see how that works and see if we have the right approach and if I make it back here at the end of the day.”
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