Darlington "a good rebound" for Reddick

Two challenging weeks finally gave way to a much-needed good day for Tyler Reddick at Darlington Raceway.

Reddick wound up the runner-up in the Goodyear 400 after Joey Logano dispatched William Byron with two laps left. It was Reddick’s first top-five finish since the Bristol dirt race when he was the leader on the receiving end of some late-race contact.

On Sunday, Reddick was hoping to be the one capitalizing on what happened in front of him.

“William [Byron] did a really good job on the restart to get by Joey [Logano],” Reddick said. “There was a little bit of contact there, so I don’t know if that’s why Joey got back to William. It also kind of looked like Joey was going under, and William kind of faded down.

“I was hoping they were going to blow their momentum a little bit more than they did, but it didn’t turn out that way.

“All-in-all, it was a good rebound for our No.8 3CHI Chevrolet team. We pitted for a vibration pretty early in the race that could have derailed our whole day, but we were able to bounce back from it.”

Reddick was running second when he pitted on lap 161 for a vibration. The vibration disappeared after the pit stop, and a caution a handful of laps later helped Reddick catch back up to the field.

After a 39th place finish at Talladega Superspeedway and a 30th place finish at Dover Motor Speedway, Reddick and company went to Darlington looking for something good to happen. They were also trying to figure out what they were missing as Reddick admitted their feast or famine season had the team looking for answers to keep them in the mix in longer races.

Sunday was a relatively clean race for Reddick. Aside from the vibration, he missed the wrecks and kept the car in one piece. Cycling to the lead through pit strategy, Reddick also led 10 laps as crew chief Randall Burnett called his driver to pit road approximately 10 laps before the leaders. A quick caution after that secured Reddick’s track position.

“Darlington is fun,” Reddick said. “It’s a frustrating place. You let your guard down for one second and your whole day can change. It’s one of the most difficult tracks that we go to, especially trying to manage the dirty air, trying to manage your right side, and not tearing it off.

“[There are] a lot of options when you go into each corner here, so it makes it really fun, but also pretty frustrating until you figure it out.”