By David Morgan, Associate Editor
TALLADEGA, Ala. – Like a Michael Jordan drive to the basket, Tyler Reddick channeled his 23XI Racing co-owner on the final lap at Talladega, weaving his way through the chaos to get to the finish line first and score the win in Sunday’s GEICO 500.
Heading into the final lap, it was shaping up to be a battle of the Fords and Toyotas, with pole-sitter Michael McDowell and six-time Talladega winner Brad Keselowski leading the Blue Ovals on the bottom lane, with Reddick leading what was left of the Toyotas on the high line.
As they powered off Turn 4 for the final time, Reddick was running fourth, with McDowell and Keselowski looking to settle it amongst themselves. Blocking for all it was worth, one final block by McDowell in which he wasn’t quite clear sent McDowell around in front of the field and opened the door for Reddick to sneak his way through.
With Keselowski slowed just enough by McDowell spinning across his nose, Reddick was home free, powering around the outside of the six-time Talladega winner and Noah Gragson to beat them both back to the line, banking his first win of the season and sixth of his NASCAR Cup Series career.
“Man, it’s incredible,” Reddick said. “Everybody on this 45 Jordan brand Toyota Camry worked really hard today. It didn’t really work out in that third stage for us, but we were able to fight and defend our track position. Was that crazy, fans? Chaos. That’s Talladega for you.
“Got to give a lot of credit to Ty Gibbs and Martin Truex [Jr.]. It was just us Toyotas left and they pushed me with everything they had. Huge credit to Martin and Ty. Without those pushes, we don’t win this race.”
The win was also the first with Jordan in attendance, who was ecstatic on pit road afterwards, thrusting his fist in the air as the team celebrated around him. The NBA Hall of Famer was all smiles, joking about turning around his streak of bad luck with his team with him at the track.
“Denny [Hamlin] keeps saying I was bad luck when I come to the track and today, we proved him wrong,” Jordan said with a grin.
“This is like an NBA playoff game for me. Obviously for the fans that support the sport itself. We’ve been working hard trying to get ourselves where we can compete against all of the top guys in this sport. We’ve done a heck of a job just to be where we are and for us to win a big race like this, it means so much to me for the effort…
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