Reddick finally finds his way back to NASCAR's victory lane at Phoenix

Tyler Reddick and his 23XI Racing crew finally had a quiet, clean day, and it ended with them in victory lane at Phoenix Raceway.

A win nearly six months to the day after their last at Kansas Speedway (April 19). Reddick did it by capitalizing on Sunday afternoon's final restart. With 19 laps to go, Reddick lined up fourth and shot to second, going through the middle off Turn 2 to pass Chase Elliott, Ty Gibbs, and Ryan Blaney. Once clear, Reddick needed only one more lap to pass leader Chase Briscoe.

“Good strategy,” said Reddick of the restart move. “I think Billy [Scott] had a really good idea of what we needed to do there, going off what our balance was. Yeah, I got really fortunate. I didn’t have a good launch, but there was a hole, and I was able to get through it.

“I thought [Briscoe] was going to be able to cover the move into [Turn] 3, but I got him loose and was able to check out.”

The season appeared to get away from Reddick and his team over the summer. A lack of execution, being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and bad race cars saw a team that won five of the first 10 races fall to third in the points and nearly out of championship contention halfway through the Chase.

Reddick went from 114 to 56 behind after his victory. He qualified sixth and scored points in both stages. Even better, Reddick averaged a top-10 running position all afternoon.

“That’s way too long,” Reddick said of the winless streak. “Man, the way that we worked there … just thinking of Phoenix, we wanted to be a lot better when we came back here, and I think we checked that box. For us, this group never lost motivation, never lost the drive to keep searching and keep trying to find ways to make ourselves better and just be an all-around better team.

“I don’t know, just something about today. It didn’t really start right, but just something about today. I had a really good feeling. Practice was amazing, and we’re back in victory lane.”

Blaney charged to second but never got close enough to challenge Reddick. Elliott finished third, while Christopher Bell, who led a race-high 85 laps, finished fourth, and Corey Heim finished fifth. Joey Logano finished sixth after sweeping the stages and leading 84 laps.

Daniel Suarez finished seventh, Briscoe faded to eighth, Ross Chastain finished ninth, and Gibbs finished 10th. Bubba Wallace finished 17th after speeding on his final pit stop. Wallace was the race leader going to pit road under the race’s last caution.

That final caution, which set up the run to the finish, came with 30 laps to go. Cup Series points leader Kyle Larson, who was having a terrible day with an ill-handling race car, hit the wall after a blown tire.

Denny Hamlin, Larson’s closest rival, finished 28th. Hamlin never recovered after blowing a right-rear tire on lap 221 and falling a lap down. A caution flew shortly after the incident, but Hamlin was denied the free pass because he had been speeding on his way to pit road for the tire issue.

Hamlin finished 28th. Larson finished 34th.

The points lead shrank to five, with Larson now leading Bell.

In all, there were six cautions in the Freeway Insurance 500. There were 21 lead changes among 10 drivers.

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