With a bold move to the front of the field in overtime, Tyler Reddick won Sunday’s Hollywood Casino 400 and left his car owner frustrated at the end of the second NASCAR Cup Series Playoff race at Kansas Speedway.
Reddick beat Joe Gibbs Racing driver and 23XI Racing co-owner Denny Hamlin to the finish line by 0.327 seconds. Hamlin led 63 laps and was more than two seconds ahead of Reddick when playoff driver Chris Buescher blew a right-rear tire on Lap 261 of a scheduled 267 to cause the ninth and final caution.
Diverging strategies then gave Reddick the opening he needed to gain automatic entry into the Playoffs’ Round of 12. Daniel Suárez stayed out on 31-lap-old tires and inherited the lead. Erik Jones, Kyle Busch and Joey Logano made two-tire stops and restarted second, third and fourth.
Reddick restarted on the bottom of the third row and surged forward while Hamlin hung back in the top lane. After the field rounded Turn 4 on the restart Lap, Reddick shot to the bottom of the track and took the lead right before the start/finish line.
On the final circuit, third-place finisher Erik Jones moved up the track on the backstretch to block Hamlin’s progress for a moment, and that gave Reddick all the breathing room he needed to secure his second victory of the season, his first at 1.5-mile Kansas and the fifth of his career.
Larson finished fourth after leading a race-high 99 laps and winning the first stage. Logano came home fifth, thanks to the two-tire call by crew chief Paul Wolfe. Chase Elliott was sixth, followed by Kyle Busch, pole winner Christopher Bell and Brad Keselowski, who won the second stage.
The race, however, had dire consequences for playoff drivers now in danger of elimination next Saturday at Bristol Motor Speedway.
Disaster struck Regular Season Champion Martin Truex Jr. before the race was four laps old. As the field was working Lap 4, Truex started to slow on the backstretch and then slammed the wall in Turn 3, the result of a cut tire.
With the suspension on his No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota damaged beyond repair, Truex retired to the garage in 36th place and fell seven points below the cut line for the Round of 12.
Bubba Wallace was next to have his hopes of advancement to the Round of 12 suffer a crippling blow. Wallace was running second on Lap 108 when his right rear tire exploded, sending his No. 23 Toyota hard into the outside wall.
The Cup Series’ next race is the Bass Pro Shops Night Race, scheduled Saturday at 7:30 p.m. ET at Bristol Motor Speedway. The 500-lapper will conclude the Cup Series Playoffs’ Round of 16, and four drivers will be eliminated from title contention at the checkered flag.
