Given his shot at the regular season title and the championship-boosting points that come with it, no one would blame Tyler Reddick for heading into last night's race at Darlington — the season finale — with a pit in his stomach. Only it wasn't nerves making him feel bad.
"I thought I was going to (puke)," said Reddick, who battled a brutal stomach bug that made an already tense race even more difficult. "I really did at the end of Stage 1, as soon as the yellow came out."
He went on to explain that his young son, Beau, was feeling sick last weekend at Daytona. Reddick started to develop symptoms at the start of the Darlington race weekend. "Felt good pretty much all the way up until the race. I don't know, just must have been the bump off of (Turn 2) or something. It just really, really got bad by the end of Stage 1. It just stayed there the rest of the way.
His team, 23XI, did everything it could to keep him from the worst-case scenario while he gutted out 500 miles of driving. Reddick asked for crackers and bread over the radio too soothe his stomach; the team handed him some pills during the stage break — only for the driver to accidentally drop them inside the No. 45 car.
Lesson learned. At the next stop, they handed him a water bottle with crushed pills already dissolved inside.
"They were feeding me the right stuff in the car to help me manage it best as I could...At one point, I was just waiting to puke all over myself. Thankfully they kept that from happening. A whole lot of other gross stuff. We were able to avoid a lot of that, which was nice — but it was extremely uncomfortable in the car all night."
As if driving through nausea wasn't enough, Reddick and team also spent the night focused on the ever-changing points battle with Kyle Larson. The regular season title may be symbolic, but it comes with an immediate 15-point lead as NASCAR Cup Series enters the playoffs. Five of the last seven drivers to take the regular season title — and those valuable points — have gone on to make the Championship 4.
"It was tough, man, when we just were bleeding points to the 5 in the middle of the race," said Reddick. "I was trying to think of what I needed to do to go faster. It was really, really hard to focus on that stuff. I was just not able to really do what I normally do good here in the car."
Reddick vs. Larson: A battle to the end
Although Reddick was running well, Kyle Larson's driving was on an entirely other level. Despite missing a race in May while attempting the Indianapolis 500, Larson stuck near the top of the Cup Series' standings all year. In the regular season finale at Darlington, he won both stages, packing away 20 stage points to slash away at the deficit between himself and Reddick.
Larson led the first 263 laps of the race, only to see Ross Chastain — looking to salvage his playoff hopes — roll the dice and stay out on old tires. Larson never regained the race lead, and finished fourth.
Reddick, queasy but undeterred, used that as an opportunity to close the gap. He crossed the line in tenth place — denying Larson and Hendrick Motorsports the regular season crown by a single point.
"It's just a testament to all the hard work that everyone at 23XI — here at the racetrack, week-in and week-out, back at Airspeed — puts into this," said Reddick of the accomplishment. "It's just been really, really fun the last two years to be a part of this process, building up to where we want to be.
"Both years really feel like we had rocky starts to get going. It's nice to be able to get to where we did in the middle of the year and start thinking about points. I think it really helped us just continue to be more consistent, get us in the right mindset for these playoffs. We'll be doing it three races at a time here soon."
It wasn't a total loss for Larson and the Hendrick Motorsports team, though. With Justin Allgaier's performance in the Coca-Cola 600 — the race Larson missed in his attempt at the double — the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet still won the regular season owner's title.
“Yeah, we got them on the owner’s side, which is nice," said Larson. "But the driver’s side is definitely a bummer. I thought we were going to be able to get it, but I guess Tyler [Reddick] must have passed a couple of cars there at the end, and then I fell back a couple of spots. Just a bummer, but we were still able to rack up a lot of playoff points this year with the wins, as well as the stage wins. You just have to take each week, week-by-week.”
