Tyler Reddick Survives Triple-Overtime to Win the EchoPark Grand Prix at COTA
26 March 2023
By Bob Francis, Managing Editor
Go Full Throttle Racing News
AUSTIN, TX — The first road course race of the year did not disappoint. Tyler Reddick battled Polesitter William Byron and a number of other favorites including AJ Allmendinger, Alex Bowman, and last year’s winner Ross Chastain to win the EchoPark Automotive Grand Prix at Circuit of The Americas (COTA). A rash of late race cautions led to an epic three NASCAR Overtime restarts. Reddick survived “Calamity Corner” (Turn 1) and opening up a large enough gap to claim his first victory of the season and the first this year for 23XI Racing .
After leading only two laps in two previous EchoPark Automotive Grand Prix starts, Reddick had the dominant car Sunday, leading 41 laps and outlasting the field in a raucous triple-overtime finish. Eight cautions bunched up the field, including three overtime attempts, but strong restarts kept Reddick out of the melee and in command of the race.
“It means the world,” Reddick said. “This whole 23XI team has been working all winter long to make the road course program better. The only thing that was really on my mind today was how to hang on. It was pretty warm in the car. Thankfully we didn’t have one more overtime; I might have been in trouble. I wouldn’t say I was nervous. I didn’t quite get every restart done perfectly, but we got the one that mattered — the last one.”
When the dust settled, Kyle Busch, who made the move to Reddick’s former Richard Childress Racing team during the offseason, finished second.
“Tyler obviously is a really good road racer,” said Busch. “He proved it driving this car last year. I was able to get in it and run right back to him. I’ve been trying to emulate the things he did in order to make this car fast last year, but not quite all the way there. They had a whale of a car.”
Alex Bowman finished third, with Ross Chastain’s battered Trackhouse Racing machine crossing the finish line fourth after contact with several cars in Turn One led to the final overtime caution. Polesitter William Byron was fifth.
“That’s just how this stuff goes; I’m mad at a bunch of people, and a bunch of people are mad at me,” Chastain said. “Nobody had anything for Tyler. We were all clawing. I love this place, and I love road course racing. The fight to get better never stops. We ended up with a good finish, but it wasn’t the prettiest.”
Reddick’s performance impressed his boss, team owner and fellow NASCAR Cup Series driver Denny Hamlin, who finished 16th.
“We knew that they were fast, knew that it was a matter of time before they would march their way to the front,” Hamlin said. “Certainly, they’ve got a lot of opportunity to build a lot of Playoff points and hopefully make a run.
“It’s a big pressure situation for Tyler. You’ve been the dominant car all weekend. There’s not much to gain. It’s yours to lose. To be able to manage those pressure situations, it’s huge.”
As often happens late in a road course race, patience lags and urgency increases. That was certainly the case Sunday with three different overtime restarts deciding the outcome. Reddick and Byron’s №24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet combined to lead 69 of the race’s 75 laps with Reddick out front a race-best 41 of those, most of them after hard-fought challenges and back-and-forth corner after corner with Byron.
“It feels good to get a top five, but we had a top-two race car really with the 45. He was really better than everybody, but I thought we were a close second,” said Byron, a two-race winner already in 2023, whose fifth-place finish at COTA was his career-best on a road course. “We’ll keep building on it.”
Busch’s runner-up effort was an impressive comeback. He had been mid-pack for most of the afternoon but gambled on fuel strategy to move forward during some late-race cautions in regulation.
“Even if we were on equal tires, they were lights out,” Busch, driver of the №8 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet, said of Reddick’s №45 team. “Overall, for as much effort as we put into coming here and focusing on this place and all the testing we did in the offseason, we’re coming out of here with a good finish. Tyler’s obviously a really good road course racer.”
