The second-to-last caution with four laps to go wiped away the three-second-plus lead that Tyler Reddick had built at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Sunday — but it ultimately didn’t matter.
The No. 8 driver emerged from that restart unscathed —despite a cascade of carnage crumbling behind him — and eventually commanded the final restart and cruised to a Verizon 200 overtime win.
And based on how he ran that race? He deserved it: The 26-year-old driver led a race-best 39 laps before kissing the storied bricks at the Brickyard.
“I’m just really glad to be able to do it here in Indianapolis,” he told NBC Sports. “This is one really special place in racing.”
The victory delivered Reddick his second win of the NASCAR Cup Series regular season — which provides some crucial security for his playoff hopes. Before Sunday, Reddick was one of 14 drivers who’d visited Victory Lane this season and was one of nine one-win drivers vying for a 16-car playoff field.
Ross Chastain initially finished second at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, but received a penalty for using an access road after being pushed out of Turn 1 on the restart. Austin Cindric finished in second place, Harrison Burton in third.
The beginning — as well as the end — of the race belonged to Reddick.
The Richard Childress Racing driver, commanding the No. 8 car, had the pole position to begin Sunday’s race and subsequently led the field for the first 12 laps. His team decided to enter pit road right before the end of Stage 1 — effectively foregoing valuable playoff points in accordance with his long-term plan.
And it worked: Reddick was one of an elite few to maneuver the 14-turn, 82-lap road course unscathed and without many headaches. At one point in the second stage, he maintained a lead of six seconds over the next-best driver.
Chase Elliott robbed from a second-place finish
Chase Elliott, the NASCAR standings leader, might have been robbed of a shoo-in top-5 finish on Sunday.
The No. 9 car was in second place on that aforementioned second-to-last restart — but just before he emerged from the lethal 14-turn road course’s Turn 1, he got bumped from behind and spun out.
Elliot finished the race in 17th position.
Ross Chastain penalized for final lap experiment
Ross Chastain made an unexpected move in the most crucial moment of Sunday’s race — avoiding the carnage on Turn 1 and instead using the course’s access road. The experiment pushed him into the lead out of nowhere and forced Reddick to battle around him to cross the finish line first.
“We were four-wide and just couldn’t go any farther right and decided to take the NASCAR access lane out there,” Chastain told NBC. He added, “Just pure reaction there.”
The move for a moment put him in second place, but NASCAR later ruled that it was illegal and penalized him to a 27th-place finish.
Here’s what Reddick said when asked what he was thinking as it unfolded in real time.
“I was like, ‘Uh... uh-oh.’ I mean, that was a scenario that had been talked about, you know? If you get bottled up, what do you do? You take the access road,” he told NBC. “I couldn’t believe that he got ahead of me. I was kind of waiting to see if he got a penalty because I didn’t want to move him out of the way and make his race worse... But yeah, I was really surprised by that. Hats off to Ross for trying to do that. But really glad it didn’t end up working out because I would’ve been pretty pissed off.”
Other observations
— Turn 1 was dangerous all Sunday afternoon. The tight right, particularly after the race’s stage restarts, would see four-car-wide scrums and cause several spin-outs. Brad Keselowski spun out early. Kevin Harvick did, too. Communicating with their teams via radio, many cars commented on how difficult it was to get tire grip particularly on that perilous bend — the hotter the temperatures, the slicker the track.
— AJ Allmendinger earned an Xfinity Series race win — his 11th since 2019 — at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Saturday and entered Sunday’s Cup race looking for a sweep at the Brickyard. The driver even led a handful of laps on Sunday and found himself in the mix at the end.
— The first of five cautions arrived with 21 laps to go when the No. 5 car, driven by Kyle Larson, appeared to lose control on a right turn and smashed into the No. 42 car, driven by Ty Dillon. The collision occurred at about 115 MPH and knocked the drivers out of the race.
Race results
