Something that Tyler Reddick wasn’t really lacking coming into this weekend’s AdventHealth 400 at Kansas Speedway was confidence. Oh well, the driver of the No. 45 23XI Racing Toyota got an additional confidence booster shot on Saturday afternoon, as he rocketed to his third pole position of the season.
Reddick cranked out a blistering lap time of 29.142 seconds (185.300 mph) in the qualifying session, which allowed him to top Denny Hamlin, a fellow Toyota driver and co-owner of his 23XI Racing team, by 0.019 seconds.
Advertisement
After climbing from his car in qualifying, a confident Reddick was very proud of the handling on his race car heading into Sunday’s race.
“It’s really awesome. Again, just this SupplyHouse Toyota Camry was really, really solid in practice. We elected to give up rolling out first, got those adjustments we wanted to, and yeah, just really, really good handling on our Toyota Camry,” Reddick explained.
With his 14th career pole position, Reddick capped off a perfect day of NASCAR Cup Series on-track activity, as he also paced the lone practice session of the weekend prior to scoring the pole for the AdventHealth 400.
Advertisement
The confidence is soaring for Reddick, who already has four wins after a historic kick off of the season, where Reddick became the first driver in NASCAR Cup Series history to win the opening three races of the year.
Now, he’s on the pole at Kansas Speedway, arguably one of 23XI Racing’s best tracks, as the team has three victories at the 1.5-mile speedway, and they’ve achieved the wins with three different drivers — Reddick, Bubba Wallace, and Kurt Busch.
Reddick says the team has been working hard to regain the advantage they held over the competition at Kansas from 2022 to 2023.
“We’ve been solid. Obviously, we had that stretch where we were really tough to beat here. We’ve worked hard to improve that. And to have a Saturday go like this, smooth, just great handling out of our Camrys is just what we want to see,” Reddick explained.
Advertisement
But if Reddick is going to snag his fifth win of the season on Sunday, he’s going to have to contend with some other drivers, who have shown quite the ability to pull through at Kansas Speedway over the years.
Hamlin, who will start second, is a four-time race winner at Kansas Speedway, and Kyle Larson, who will start fourth, has three wins at the track since 2021, including a win in this very event a season ago. Larson, who hasn’t reached victory lane since his win in the AdventHealth 400 a year ago, will be hungry to break through on Sunday.
Wedged between Hamlin and Larson on the starting grid will be Ty Gibbs, who is arguably the hottest driver on the circuit all of a sudden. Gibbs is coming off his first-career win, which came last weekend in the Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway. And Gibbs has collected six consecutive top-10 finishes heading into Sunday’s race. He’s certainly no slouch.
Official AdventHealth 400 Starting Lineup
1. 45-Tyler Reddick
2. 11-Denny Hamlin
3. 54-Ty Gibbs
4. 5-Kyle Larson
5. 19-Chase Briscoe
6. 77-Carson Hocevar
7. 17-Chris Buescher
8. 7-Daniel Suarez
9. 12-Ryan Blaney
10. 23-Bubba Wallace
11. 20-Christopher Bell
12. 60-Ryan Preece
13. 9-Chase Elliott
14. 24-William Byron
15. 22-Joey Logano
16. 47-Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
17. 97-Shane van Gisbergen
18. 71-Michael McDowell
19. 43-Erik Jones
20. 3-Austin Dillon
21. 6-Brad Keselowski
22. 35-Riley Herbst
23. 8-Kyle Busch
24. 67-Corey Heim
25. 38-Zane Smith
26. 34-Todd Gilliland
27. 16-AJ Allmendinger
28. 4-Noah Gragson
29. 41-Cole Custer
30. 21-Josh Berry
31. 1-Ross Chastain
32. 42-John Hunter Nemechek
33. 48-Alex Bowman
34. 2-Austin Cindric
35. 51-Cody Ware
36. 88-Connor Zilisch
37. 10-Ty Dillon
Advertisement
This article was originally published on www.si.com/onsi/racing-america as Tyler Reddick’s Confidence Soars Further With Kansas Pole.
Read the full article here