It was a roller-coaster conclusion to what had otherwise been a calm afternoon of racing at Kansas. Denny Hamlin led 131 laps in the contest, but faced pressure from Reddick in the battle to the finish.
Reddick passed Hamlin for the lead with 10 laps to go, but relinquished the lead while nearly running out of fuel. Reddick was chasing Hamlin back down when the caution flew for Cody Ware spinning with two laps to go.
This caution, the first of the race outside of the two stage breaks, sent the race to overtime and brought the field to pit road, with most taking two fresh tires. Kyle Larson jumped to the lead on the restart, while Reddick, Hamlin and Christopher Bell all made contact battling for second. Despite this, Reddick rallied and chased down Larson, passing him for the win on the final lap.
Race Results: NASCAR Cup Series AdventHealth 400 at Kansas
“Just really blessed with that late caution,” said Reddick. “How about that? Was that nuts or what? I couldn’t believe it. First off, I feel like I have to say, I never like being on the other side of it. I really hate that for Christopher Bell. It’s good, hard racing. The 11 came up and I just took off tight. Not thrilled that I got Christopher there. I hate that for him, because he was having a good, solid day.
“These late-race restarts, it gets really, really crazy there. Obviously, had a run on the 5 and I was just shocked I was able to get to his inside there. Just an incredible SupplyHouse Toyota Camry all day long. I was really thankful for that late-race caution.”
23XI Racing has enjoyed plenty of success at Kansas, with Reddick, Bubba Wallace and Kurt Busch all winning races for the team at the 1.5-mile facility. While Reddick was not dominant on Sunday, he knew he had the car to compete for the win.
“We were really solid here last fall and the car was a lot like that again here this weekend,” Reddick said. “We didn’t lead a lot of laps, unfortunately. I let Denny get away there in stage one and we were just behind him most of the time there. To be able to make the right call there, great call by Billy [Scott, crew chief] to put two tires on. We didn’t have the cleanest restart. I tried to cover the 20, he got outside and we were three-wide and all ran out of room.”