Reddick 'fairly nervous' below the NASCAR Playoff cutline

Tyler Reddick and crew chief Billy Scott have some work cut out for them over the next two weeks at Kansas Speedway and the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval.

“I think we all know we got our asses handed to us last week,” he said on Saturday morning at Kansas.

They find themselves 23 points below the Cup Series Playoff elimination cutline due to a disaster of a race last weekend at New Hampshire Motor Speedway where they battled a lack of speed and brake issues.

Reddick finished 21st and only scored two stage points earlier in the race.

And while Kansas used to be a track where 23XI Racing excelled over the first three years of the NextGen era, that wasn’t the case in the spring and recent rules changes have taken away their advantages.

“I think (we’re) fairly nervous,” Reddick said. “We had a stretch here where it was a 23XI Toyota or a Toyota car in general, we had a pretty good record here to be able to win races. I look at the last two or three times we’ve been here we’ve been missing a little bit of something. The car changes, the Goodyear tires change, so naturally you’ve got to keep up with it.

“I think it’s fair to be nervous, there’s a lot that weighs on this weekend that its super important for us to either win or run top-5 all day and score a lot of points.”

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This race, more so than next week, is especially important because Reddick is assuming two things — that Shane Van Gisbergen and AJ Allmendinger could upset the field and that stage points will be hard to come by.

“It’s a fair point,” Reddick said. “I wouldn’t say it’s a reason why I say we have to run top-5 and score a lot of points because of Shane. He just adds to it, AJ (Allmendinger) adds to it as well. He’s going to be doing the same thing, they are both really good road course racers. That’s just part of it, if we are in that spot where we have to win so be it. We will do what we can to go out there and be the better driver.”

Short of winning on Sunday and making all of this a moot point, Reddick feels like he needs to get within at least 10 points to have a fighting chance next week at the Roval.

“I really haven’t run through that yet but I’m almost positive the last two seasons we’ve gone into the Roval below the cutline,” Reddick said. “You never want to go into that race in that position but you don’t want to go into that race in a tricky spot.

“My gut would say even if we are outside by 10 points, it’s doable. Sitting where we are minus 23 points outside, that’s a pretty hard number to overcome. That’s counting on others not getting stage points.

“I would love to win and not worry about this next week, but we’ve been able to overcome a deficit twice over the last few years. That does give me confidence.”