Tyler Reddick battles into Round of 8 following Roval finish

CONCORD, N.C. — Tyler Reddick’s postseason fate was literally up in the air at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval.

A stack-up ahead of him entering the reconfigured hairpin of Turn 7 sent Reddick’s No. 45 sliding under braking, right-rear first, into Denny Hamlin’s No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota and launching three of the car’s three wheels off the ground.

Bent toe link and all, Reddick’s 23XI Racing team rallied from early adversity to advance to the Round of 8 in the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs by 23 points on Sunday afternoon.

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In the final run to the checkered flag, Reddick was in a fierce points battle with Joey Logano for the final transfer position. But a post-race disqualification of 18th-place finisher Alex Bowman ultimately cost the No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet enough points to drop him out of the postseason picture, allowing both Reddick and Logano to advance.

Reddick, the Regular Season Champion, entered the day 14 points above the provisional elimination line in seventh place, with eight of 12 playoff contenders set to advance with championship hopes still alive after Sunday’s race. A Stage 1 victory netted him 10 points to his cushion, but pitting plummeted him down the running order as other teams flipped the stage by hitting pit road before its Lap 25 conclusion.

Restarting 26th put Reddick in the hornet’s nest. Disaster struck, and the handling of his No. 45 Toyota was ruined.

“Dude, bad. It was real bad,” Reddick said.

The damage was immediately apparent behind the wheel, but much of the repairs couldn’t be completed until the end of the second stage. Crew chief Billy Scott was left to assess the next steps in the interim.

“It’s more or less trying to just figure out how much is wrong and what can we do to help it,” Scott told NASCAR.com. “Obviously, we’re finding stuff right now as we’re trying to put stuff on to go back through tech (inspection) of knowing what’s bent, and chassis points broke out and stuff. We figured there was more damage than we expected.

“So, we fixed the toe and verified camber and some of the stuff we could do on the pit stop and had to make a little bit of adjustment to the balance of the car to have it drive somewhat decent and let him make the most of it.”

By the time the green-white-checkered flag waved to end Stage 2, Reddick was 36th — the last car on the track. But the adjustments on the ensuing pit stop were apparently enough to give Reddick something to work with over the final 55 laps.

“We just got all the damage repair do we could do,” Scott said. “And it’s kind of like, ‘All right, here’s what you got. You have to relearn it now and figure it out.’ And he does a really good job adapting to stuff. Obviously, the guys did an excellent job of getting it back close and it was drivable, and then he did great of just figuring out how to drive it that way and making passes.”

Reddick couldn’t pinpoint exactly what changed, but that stop proved to be a pivot point.

“I don’t know what exactly they got right for the start of Stage 3, but it was a much better race car from that point forward,” Reddick said. “But it drove completely different than what I had in Stage 1.”

A two-time winner in 2024, Reddick worked his way to 19th by Lap 81 when the caution waved for Austin Dillon’s departed left-front wheel, with Reddick scored five points out of the Round of 8. Under that yellow, Scott chose to call Reddick to pit road for four fresh tires, giving Reddick a chance to carve through the field on fresh rubber from the 26th spot all over again.

WATCH: An up-close view of Tyler Reddick’s late-race surge into the Round of 8

With points on the line, Reddick said he was able to keep his emotions in check: “I was just doing my job.”

“It can all seem really complex in the outside looking in, but it’s pretty simple for me,” Reddick said. “I just asked them the cars I needed to pass, where I was to the cut line, and I just focused on running the best laps possible and trying to be aggressive and timing the passes. You know, if I could get within a car length of somebody in the hairpin, I could get to the inside and put us both in a bad spot, and you just have to be conscious about that.”

That came to a head with contact with Daniel Hemric at Turn 7 for 18th place, sliding into the corner and accidentally turning the No. 31 Chevy around.

“It’s tough,” Reddick reflected. “I needed to go, and we raced through there pretty tight. I was trying to stay on line, and he was trying to run close to me, and, yeah, went down into first (gear) and wheel-hopped a little bit, back kicked out and I spun him out. But that’s just what happens. I had to go. I had to race. I had to make the pass.”

Ultimately, Reddick surged all the way back to 11th place, while Logano backslid to eighth in the closing laps. Due to Bowman’s DQ, Reddick advanced to the Round of 8 as the seventh of eight drivers to move forward.

Part of that margin stemmed from Reddick’s charge to the Regular Season Championship, which provided an additional 15 playoff points for Reddick to carry from round to round.

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“I think it goes to show every point matters,” Scott said. “And I think you see it every year. About every round, it comes down to a few points — less than five, generally. So that’s just why you fight. I mean, even last week at Talladega, damage repair there, too. Watkins Glen –yeah, we’ve done it more often than we would like we’d like in these playoffs. So it’s just another statement that is how (much) it matters and never give one point on the table.”

The Round of 8 starts Sunday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway with the South Point 400 (2:30 p.m. ET, NBC, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App).