Tyler Reddick won the NASCAR Cup Series (NCS) Regular Season Championship with a 10th place result on Sunday night at Darlington Raceway. Reddick overcame fighting an illness during the 500-mile race, persevering by one point in the championship standings to earn the regular season driver’s title. Reddick is joined in the Cup Series Playoffs by four other Camry drivers, including Christopher Bell, Denny Hamlin, Ty Gibbs and Martin Truex Jr.
Bell led all Camrys at Darlington with a third-place result. Gibbs and Bubba Wallace, who started on the pole, were involved in a multi-car incident late in the race, and both were able to continue and cross the finish line in the top 20. Wallace fell just outside the Playoff cutoff, while Truex had an incident early in the race but was able to secure the final spot in the Playoff field.
TYLER REDDICK, No. 45 Upper Deck Toyota Camry XSE, 23XI Racing
Finishing Position: 10th
How were you able to maintain your focus battling illness during the race?
“I don’t really know if I did honestly. Just things fell our way there at the end. Yeah, I started the day off feeling really, really good just kind of trying to take my time to get around Bubba (Wallace). Him and the 5 (Kyle Larson) kind of jumped us on the first cycle. I thought we had a long race and plenty of time and just man, by the end of stage one I couldn’t even really focus on what to tell the guys to do on the Upper Deck Toyota Camry. It was frustrating, man. We had that buffer over the 5 and just watched it disappear all day long. I tried everything I can to drive this car as fast as I can, it was just a real struggle honestly. I don’t have anything left.”
What does it mean for this team to win the regular season championship and score those extra 15 points going into the Playoffs?
“It’s huge for us. It’s a bummer, man. This has been one of my best tracks and we just had an all off night. I hate that. Like I said, I hated to use that buffer up that we had coming in here, but this is what this team is kind of all about. I feel like this is the worst night we’ve had in months and months speed wise, and I still finished 10th, and it was an all-out struggle for us. Just really proud of everybody on this team standing behind me. I couldn’t give great feedback, and it was just really, really hard to focus and keep it out of the wall there all night. It’s a shame we gave some points up. I felt like this is a race we could win, but it’s really nice in year two for me here at this team and year four of this team to get the regular season championship like we did.”
— Toyota Racing —