At the end of a three-car battle for the lead, a win and a spot in the Championship 4, Tyler Reddick pulled off a last-lap pass on Ryan Blaney in the final corner to prevail in the Straight Talk Wireless 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Reddick overcame a disadvantage on tires on the final lap to first pass Denny Hamlin in Turns 1 and 2 before powering to the outside of Blaney in Turns 3 and 4 coming to the checkered flag. Reddick's third win of the 2024 season puts him in the Championship 4, giving him the opportunity to race for a NASCAR Cup Series championship for the first time in his career.
After winning the pole but facing a deep points deficit after flipping out a week ago at Las Vegas, Reddick ran a step behind the rest of the leaders throughout the day, prompting crew chief Billy Scott to leave Reddick on the racetrack as long as possible during the final round of green flag stops hoping for a caution.
That caution didn't come, and Reddick had to come to pit road with 16 laps to go. But then, a spin by Kyle Larson while racing for the lead with Blaney brought out a caution with 13 laps to go that allowed Reddick to stay out while everyone else pitted and take the lead back. Reddick dropped back initially on the restart with five lap older tires, but kept pace with Blaney and Hamlin before his surge on the final lap to prevail and validate his regular-season championship with a Championship 4 spot.
Straight Talk Wireless 400 unofficial results
- #45 - Tyler Reddick
- #12 - Ryan Blaney
- #11 - Denny Hamlin
- #20 - Christopher Bell
- #9 - Chase Elliott
- #24 - William Byron
- #48 - Alex Bowman
- #16 - A.J. Allmendinger
- #77 - Carson Hocevar (R)
- #41 - Ryan Preece
"We were backed in a corner, man. We had no other choice. I knew we were at a tire deficit, and here at Homestead that's a death sentence -- but I don't care," Reddick told NBC Sports. "We did what it took to win this race. We're fighting for a championship. ... I couldn't believe it. I just knew I needed to get even with him on his right side door, I didn't care what he did. He raced me clean, I appreciate it. Just really, really excited that we're gonna get to have a shot at this championship."
Reddick's victory also puts 23XI Racing in the Championship 4 for the first time, giving team co-owner and NBA icon Michael Jordan a shot at his first NASCAR championship. Jordan, who has been a constant presence with his race team throughout the 2024 season, was as elated as any member of the No. 45 team after the checkered flag as he earned his chance to win his first championship in a professional sport since winning the 1998 NBA championship with the Chicago Bulls.
"Little kid drove his ass off. I'm proud of him," Jordan told NBC Sports. "He just let go. He just went for it, and I'm glad. We needed it. We needed it."
What might have been
Sunday's race at Homestead was a playoff race for the ages, as the day was dominated by playoff drivers and saw a Homestead track-record 33 lead changes. But depending on certain variables in the final 15 laps, multiple other outcomes could have played out leading to a completely different story.
For Kyle Larson, Sunday could have been a story of him battling all the way back from cutting a right rear tire, which he did by storming from the back of the field back into a position to win the race. Larson was running down Ryan Blaney on the final long green flag run, and he tried to take his shot to the outside entering Turn 3 as Blaney drove low to pass the lapped car of Austin Dillon.
But Larson had no room to make the pass cleanly, and contact with the No. 3 car would send him spinning to bring out the final caution. Although Larson was able to blend back in third under the yellow flag, extra work on the diffuser of his car led to a longer pit stop that doomed him to a 13th-place finish.
"Austin did nothing wrong. I was hoping he'd see me coming and give me the top knowing I was running there. But he didn't, he kept running his line," Larson told reporters on pit road. "There was a little bit of a hole and I thought that might be my opportunity to win if I could get clear of Austin and get to the wall, and who knows how the exit of 4 would've went. It just didn't work out that way.
"... That was as close as I had gotten to (Blaney), and I felt like I had to make the move just because with the way the air is and the grip's out of the tires, you're just kind of stuck. I don't think I did anything wrong. There was a gap and I was gonna try and take it."
Alternatively, the story of the race could have been Denny Hamlin's outstanding final restart to take the lead with seven laps to go, or Ryan Blaney's pass for the lead on Hamlin going down the backstretch with two laps to go. Instead, both were left to lament their missed opportunity to make it to the Championship 4, as both were tantalizingly close to an automatic berth in the championship race after entering Homestead below the cut line to make the final round of the playoffs.
"I didn't have a very good last lap. Man, I thought I got into (Turn) 3 hard, and the 45 just blasted off in there and it stuck for him. Which is pretty impressive," Blaney told NBC Sports. "... I don't know if we gave it away. I mean, we got the lead back after losing it on the restart. Just that last lap didn't really play out for us. ... It'll suck for the night, and then we'll look forward to Martinsville tomorrow morning."
"I tried to cover my lanes, but just couldn't quite get off the corner as good as I needed to there on that short run," Hamlin told NBC Sports. "The short run wasn't my specialty all day, obviously. But either way, controlling the race with two to go you've got to try to find a way to finish it. And I just didn't."
The playoff standings
With his victory, Tyler Reddick joins Joey Logano in advancing to the Championship 4, leaving just two spots remaining for the six other drivers yet to advance from the Round of 8. Christopher Bell now boasts a comfortable 29-point advantage over the cut line, but things are now very tight at the cut line.
Thanks to a sixth-place finish compared to Larson's 13th, William Byron holds a seven-point advantage over Larson for the final spot above the cut line, with Denny Hamlin at a far from insurmountable 18 points back. Ryan Blaney (-38) and Chase Elliott (-43) face much deeper deficits and will likely have to win Martinsville next week to make the Championship 4, but both have won the penultimate race at Martinsville before and both will enter next Sunday's race coming off strong runs at Homestead.
In Elliott's case, the 2020 Cup Series champion led a season-high 81 laps on his way to finishing fifth. Logano ran a fairly pedestrian race, finishing 28th with his Championship 4 spot already secured.
Race results rundown
- After earning a Championship 4 spot in the Xfinity Series, A.J. Allmendinger continued his trend of strong runs in Cup races at Homestead, finishing eighth for his third straight top 10 at this track in Cup competition. Allmendinger also earned consecutive Cup top-10 finishes for the first time since Sonoma and Nashville in 2023, and his five top 10s in 16 starts this season are just two less than the seven he had running the full season last year.
- Carson Hocevar came one step closer to Rookie of the Year honors with a ninth place finish, giving him his sixth top 10 of the 2024 season. Hocevar holds a 110-point advantage over Josh Berry for top rookie honors, and the process of engraving his name as the winner of the rookie title fight can now likely begin with two races to go. As a consolation prize for Berry, an 11th-place finish for him gave him his first top 15 since all the way back at Richmond in August.
- Ryan Preece's solid finish to the 2024 season continues, as a 10th-place run gives him five top-10 finishes on the 2024 season and a new career-best mark in that category. Of Preece's five top 10s this year, three have come in his last seven starts.
- It looked early on that Bubba Wallace may have a car equal to that of his 23XI teammate, and he would make the highlight reel with a daring pass through the middle to take the lead on a restart before finishing second in Stage 1. However, Wallace's car would progressively fade and he would end up with an 18th-place finish.
- Justin Haley almost ended up being a massive X factor, as he would spin from a top 10 starting spot on the opening lap directly in front of Chase Elliott and many other cars, who somehow avoided Haley to limit him to a harmless single car spin in Turn 3. However, Haley would end up getting spun in the same corner later in the race by Ty Gibbs and wound up finishing a lap down in 34th.
- The attrition rate in Sunday's race proved to be incredibly low, as the entire field completed more than 220 of 267 laps with 33 of 38 cars finishing on the lead lap. The lone car that failed to finish was that of J.J. Yeley, who dropped out after contact with the wall and other issues on the final long run.
Next Race
The Round of 8 comes to a close and the Championship 4 will be decided in the Xfinity 500 at Martinsville Speedway next Sunday at 2 p.m. ET on NBC.
