Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway was a race of comebacks.
From race winner Alex Bowman and runner-up finisher Kyle Larson to Kyle Busch in fourth, the top 10 was filled with drivers who had to fight back from a mistake, or even two, during the Pennzoil 400 at the 1.5-mile speedway.Â
Among them was Tyler Reddick.
The Richard Childress Racing driver finished exactly where he was supposed to start the race, taking the checkered flag in seventh.
“I guess if you look at where we started and where he finished, you would think it was kind of a boring day,” Reddick told SiriusXM NASCAR Radio Monday. “But it was anything but that.”
Reddick’s long day began before the green flag, when the No. 8 team had to change a steering rack on his car. That forced Reddick to start the 274-lap race from the rear of the field.
“The track position that we forfeited to make that repair certainly cost us a little bit more than we were anticipating during the race,” Reddick said in a media release. “We still had some good speed in our Chevy, but it was definitely very difficult to manage the dirty air and figure out what adjustments needed to be made, and what direction to go with adjustments to our race car during the race.
The day proved even longer on Lap 63. Like many others Sunday, Reddick got loose and spun exiting turn four. His No. 8 Chevrolet then went skidding through the frontstretch grass.
“Your risk versus reward has changed a lot as a driver with this new car,” Reddick told SiriusXM. “Just knowing where that edge is and how much you can push it at that edge has totally changed. At the point in stage in the race that we were in, by no means was I really trying to push the issue, I thought I was playing it fairly safe. And honestly, because of our spin there, the rest of the day, I was pretty against running right up by the wall in (turn) three and four and really maximizing the speed I think it should have been capable of.”
Unlike in the past when cars were severely damaged by infield grass, Reddick’s was able to continue.
By the end of the first stage he was already in 19th.
“We didn’t lose a lap and got back in the game,” Reddick said. “From there, we clawed a little bit at a time, picking up one or two spots on pit road, a couple of spots on restarts, just whatever we could to claw our way into better track position.”
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With a car that struggled on short runs Reddick would crack the top 10 briefly in the second stage before placing 11th.Â
In the final stage he would run as high as sixth before coming home seventh in an overtime finish. It was his first top-10 finish through three races.
Reddick’s result was made more impressive given what he had to deal with in his cockpit.
On SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, Reddick revealed he again experienced a major physical issue that first plagued him Feb. 27 at Auto Club Speedway. During his dominant performance in Fontana, Reddick’s left leg went to sleep throughout the event, first occurring 20 laps into the race.
Reddick told SiriusXM that his team thought it had found a fix for the issue, but instead both of Reddick’s legs went to sleep during the Las Vegas race. The same thing happened to Stewart-Haas Racing’s Aric Almirola.
“I didn’t know where the gas pedal was that well and I could not feel a brake at all,” Reddick said. “I actually made it worse, which is not good. I left the race just dumbfounded. I couldn’t believe that it got worse.”
Losing feeling in your legs while racing at 180 mph is already dangerous. To have that happen at high-braking track like Phoenix Raceway next weekend would be another thing.
“I’m going to be in lots of trouble if I can’t use my brake pedal or my left foot when we get to Phoenix,” Reddick said. “It’s a totally new cockpit, the cockpit in this car is deeper. Because the pedals are floor mounted, there’s a higher false floor, a lot of things have changed and so it’s a little bit easier to maybe get your feet too high too low, not get the blood flow that you need.”
Last week, Reddick told SPEED SPORT his theory about why his leg was going numb.
“It could be a number of things, my body’s changed shape a little bit just from working out,” Reddick said. “Maybe I’m sitting on a flat spot, kind of forcing my leg to sit in a flat spot that normally was just a different shape. … We had (seat) inserts repoured recently. … Certainly one thing I never thought about is to trying get in better shape is the less body fat I have on me, the body fat’s kind of like natural cushioning, and the less cushioning I have, it’s going to become more and more important to get the insert right and all the driver comfort, right? Because you just don’t have the padding to kind of sit on and I think that kind of played a role into what had happened to me at Fontana.”
You can view Reddick’s comments in the video below.