NASCAR CUP SERIES: COOK OUT SOUTHERN 500

September 1, 2024

Tyler Reddick

Press Conference

An Interview with:

THE MODERATOR: We are now joined by our 2024 regular-season champion, Tyler Reddick.

We'll go right to questions.

Q. What were you suffering from? Have you ever felt that bad in a car?

TYLER REDDICK: No, that pretty much tops it. That's the worst I've felt. I don't know, I guess just a stomach bug or something.

My son was feeling a little down last week at Daytona. We had to take him to the infield care center after the race. He was struggling pretty bad on race day, on Saturday.

Yeah, I feel like midday Friday, started really struggling. I was hoping Saturday morning it would be gone. It was terrible on Saturday. Woke up Sunday with the same hope it would be gone again.

Felt good pretty much all the way up until the race. I don't know, just must have been the bump off of two or something. It just really, really got bad by the end of stage one. It just stayed there the rest of the way.

Just really thankful that a lot of great people on our team. They were feeding me the right stuff in the car to help me manage it best as I could. Just smart people. Able to put the right stuff in my drink to help calm my stomach down. At one point, I was just waiting to puke all over myself. Thankfully they kept that from happening. A whole lot of other gross stuff.

We were able to avoid a lot of that, which was nice, but it was extremely uncomfortable in the car all night.

Q. You weren't puking?

TYLER REDDICK: I thought I was going to, I really did at the end of stage one, as soon as the yellow came out.

Q. What about the other end?

TYLER REDDICK: I held on for dear life all night. I thought it was going to happen, but...

I actually really just wanted to get it out because it was really, really bad. I took some Imodium at the infield care center earlier. That was the worse thing for me because I couldn't get anything out that I wanted. It was just a rough night.

Q. How does somebody get through a night like that?

TYLER REDDICK: Well, a fast car certainly helps. It really showed it in practice. Yeah, it was really, really strong in practice. When I was feeling good, we started off the race in stage one, just thought, All right, we get into these green-flag cycles, I'll have a shot to get to the lead. That's when things started to spiral out of control.

The car was really, really strong right from the get-go. It was tough, man, when we just were bleeding points to the 5 in the middle of the race. I was trying to think of what I needed to do to go faster. It was really, really hard to focus on that stuff. I was just not able to really do what I normally do good here in the car.

I don't know, I was just kind of driving with one hand, almost. I don't know how to really describe it. It was really tough in the car.

Q. How do you trick yourself to not focus on what you're feeling, focus on what you have going on?

TYLER REDDICK: Yeah, I mean, to answer that, it's what we have right in front of us. We're trying to win this thing, win the regular season. I mean, that's what we were mindful of the whole way. Just trying to think of what we could do to stay in the hunt of that.

We got to stage three, we were just thinking, Okay, how many points are we behind? Where do we need to be? We went to work on what we needed to do to try to put ourselves in position to get there.

I mean, it took things out of our control to make it happen. Some cars got in front of the 5. That's ultimately what allowed us to get it from 10th.

Yeah, just got to fight all night long. You never can count on that happening, right? The best car all night losing control of the race. But you have to be in position to take advantage of it in case it does.

Q. What does that trophy mean to you?

TYLER REDDICK: Yeah, it's just a testament to all the hard work that everyone at 23XI, here at the racetrack, week in and week out, back at Airspeed, puts into this. We're on year four of their goals, right? It's just been really, really fun the last two years to be a part of this process, building up to where we want to be.

I mean, it takes a lot of hard work to be consistent as we've been through the summer stretch. Both years really feel like we had rocky starts to get going. It's nice to be able to get to where we did in the middle of the year and start thinking about points. I think it really helped us just continue to be more consistent, get us in the right mindset for these Playoffs, just managing risk versus reward. We'll be doing it three races at a time here soon.

Q. At what point this year did you start to think winning the regular-season championship was attainable?

TYLER REDDICK: I think it became a lot more possible -- I don't know. I feel like the first race I thought it could happen or we had a shot at it within a race of points, I think it was after, like, Chicago. The 5 was right there in the mix with us, took a big hit on points. I think a lot of normal top contenders have some shaky days just due to crazy circumstances.

I think that was the first one where we were, we're starting to creep in on it. Just things continued to kind of just fall. We just kept getting closer and closer and closer. It happened pretty quick, it felt like.

Q. Your teammate Bubba fell short of making the Playoffs. What will you say to him?

TYLER REDDICK: Honestly, I feel like that stuff -- I mean, there's a number of things, right, I could say. I feel like honestly it's probably best we keep it between me and him, right? It's tough. I've been in his spot. It's not fun to be that close and just miss it, man.

It's tough to go back and look. You can pick apart the races each weekend. We gave up points here or there. It's a tough thing.

For them, if they just go through the rest of this, focus on continuing to improve that consistency, they'll be better off for next year.

At the end of the day, though, there's just some things you can't control, man. I feel like a lot of times this year they've been right in the middle of stuff happening on the racetrack. A lot of times this year, I don't know how to explain it, when things have happened on the racetrack, I've missed it and been able to benefit from it.

Call it what you will, but it's just sometimes how racing can go. I know they can get better and I know they will get better. They have a great opportunity here over the rest of this year to reload and be ready to go for next time.

THE MODERATOR: Tyler, congratulations. Thanks for joining us for a little bit.

TYLER REDDICK: Thank you, guys.