Tyler Reddick Wins First Race with 23XI Racing at Circuit of The Americas – Motorsports Tribune

By Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service

AUSTIN, Texas – Tyler Reddick prevailed in three overtime re-starts to claim his first trophy of the year – and first with his new team, 23XI Racing, with a 1.411-second victory over two-time series champion Kyle Busch in the EchoPark Automotive Grand Prix – the NASCAR Cup Series’ first road course race of the season.

It was a field of international champions and NASCAR’s very best at the famed Circuit of The Americas course but for most of the race the outcome looked to be decided in a good ole Texas duel between the two fastest cars all weekend driven by Reddick and Hendrick Motorsports’ William Byron. The pair exchanged the lead, lap after exciting lap for most of the afternoon.

And on the final two-lap restart Reddick was able to put his No. 45 23XI Racing Toyota out front exiting Turn 1 – a tight left-hander – and power forward to the lead; while Busch and third-place finisher Alex Bowman, fourth-place finisher – and defending race winner – Ross Chastain and fifth-place Byron fought door-to-door bumper-to-bumper as they chased after him.

“I’ve been wanting to win here in a Cup car for a long time,” the 27-year-old Californian Reddick said, who now has four NASCAR Cup Series wins, but noted this was his first as a Toyota driver and with his 23XI Racing Team – co-owned by fellow competitor Denny Hamlin and NBA superstar Michael Jordan.

“It means the world,” said Reddick, who sat down on the track and leaned against his car with a bag of ice after winning to cool down on the typically Texas-hot afternoon. “This whole 23XI team has been working hard all winter long to make the road course program better and was extremely motivated to come in here and improve performance. Just so proud of this Monster Energy team and TRD (Toyota Racing Development). All the resources they’ve put in to turn around the road course program means a lot.”

As often happens late in a road course race, patience lags and urgency increases. That was certainly the case Sunday with three different overtime restarts deciding the outcome. Reddick and Byron’s No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet combined to lead 69 of the race’s 75 laps with Reddick out front a race best 41 of those, most of them after hard-fought challenges and back-and-forth corner after corner with the race polesitter Byron.

“It feels good to get a top five, but we had a top-two race car really with the 45, he was…