“I had an opportunity to win the race”: Tyler Reddick upset with Nashville result despite several positives

There were several positive takeaways for Tyler Reddick after Sunday's Ally 400. However, Reddick could not overlook that he could have won the 331-lap event. The 23XI Racing driver spoke about the same in a recent conversation with SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.

Tyler Reddick felt the speed on his car was at par with Denny Hamlin's Toyota, which was the fastest car in the field. The #45 team had committed to the pit road for the last time just before NASCAR took the race into its first overtime. Within the next four restarts, Reddick was one of the top 4 cars running on the 1.33-mile racetrack.

Unfortunately, as he ran on the high lane, Joey Logano blocked him, making Zane Smith veer down the backstretch. Smith passed Reddick coming out of turns 3 and 4 resulting in the latter falling back to P3. Reflecting on those moments in the race, the 28-year-old athlete said (via SiriusXM NASCAR Radio on X),

"It's hard to sleep after one gets away like that, it always has been. I'd say for us, it's kind of a compound issue. In my opinion, us, the 11 (Denny Hamlin) and the 20 (Christopher Bell) were all very very close on speed. We bolted on that last planned set of Goodyear tires...Just our balance wasn't there, our speed wasn't there (during) the last run of the race."

Tyler Reddick was also the first one to get four fresh tires. Therefore, missing out on the victory was particularly disheartening for Reddick.

"For me, it was really frustrating. Being the first car on four (fresh) tires and I just couldn't go anywhere, I couldn't make speed, I couldn't run the bottom like I had all day long," he added.

However, there were some positives indeed. Reddick took home 51 points, 11 more than race-winner Joey Logano. Still, the competitor in Reddick preferred the win rather than a bag full of playoff points.

"We scored the most points; there's a lot of positives; I didn't wanna hear it in the moment," Reddick said. "I still really don't wanna hear it. That's the competitor in me; I had an opportunity to win the race and I did not capture it."

Despite the win slipping away, Reddick sits fourth in the NASCAR Cup Series standings with 611 points. His hunt for victory will resume next week in the Grant Park 165 at the Chicago road course.

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Tyler Reddick revealed his biggest mistake during his Nashville outing

As Joey Logano blocked Reddick, who was trying to capitalize on the outer groove, the latter felt he had made a mistake. He recalled that Logano had outrun Chris Buescher on the previous restart by riding the top lane. Therefore, he should have tried to pass Logano from the inside, suggested Tyler Reddick.

"I was really hoping (Logano) was going to take that approach I’d seen others take all day long," Reddick told Denny Hamlin in the latest episode of Actions Detrimental, as reported by On3. "In the moment, I didn’t know that when he was racing the 14 (Chase Briscoe), he raced him in a similar way, really ran up the track, ran him out of room."

"I mean kind of all day long I’ve been adversely affected by the Big Arc in the late Apex and pretty much had zero success running within two or three car links of somebody on the bottom doing that," he added, speaking about why he had not chosen to ride the bottom lane.

Tyler Reddick is currently in his fifth full-time season with 23XI Racing. His most recent victory came at Talladega Superspeedway earlier this year. Reddick is a two-time NASCAR Xfinity Series champion (2018, 2019) and also the first driver to do so in two consecutive years with two different teams (JR Motorsports and Richard Childress Racing).