Tyler Reddick aiming to close the gap on Chase Elliott in NASCAR regular season championship

While Tyler Reddick grabbed the pole during practice at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Friday, Chase Elliott, the current point leader, was the 12th fastest. With the advantage of winning the pole and having the fastest car in the field for the 30th anniversary of the prestigious Brickyard 400, the 23XI Racing driver feels that he can get closer to Elliott on points.

The 50-minute practice session on Friday afternoon witnessed Tyler Reddick recording a speed of 182.582 mph and a lap time of 49.293 seconds (as per racingamerica.com). On the other hand, Chase Elliott registered his fastest lap at 180.058 mph. Ryan Blaney, Denny Hamlin, Christopher Bell, and Alex Bowman made the top 5.

When asked whether he was aiming to capitalize on his starting position for Sunday's NASCAR Cup Series race, the Toyota pilot said (via Bob Pockrass):

"Certainly, but not necessarily going psych... just lose your mind like, I have to win and throw it all away. When you have solid cars like this, it's just about executing. We do our job tomorrow; we should have a really good shot at a very solid pit stop...I think that's what our main priority is."

"Yes, we wanna have a track position at the start of the race. If we can put that thing in the top 10 and have a shot to do it again in round 2...We just got the opportunity to go for the pole and have good pit selection and that...in turn will just help the entire day. We do those things... points will definitely come," added the 28-year-old Corning native.

Today, Tyler Reddick is third in the Cup Series standings with 688 points to his name and 15 points behind Chase Elliott. The playoff picture shows that Reddick currently sits on the seventh berth, while his teammate Bubba Wallace is 27 points behind the provisional cutline.

Tyler Reddick wishes to capitalize on race data, thanks to boss Denny Hamlin

Acknowledging that he had a fast car for this year's Brickyard 400, a 400-mile race that has not hit the IMS oval since 2020, Tyler Reddick hoped to take pointers from his boss and 23XI Racing's co-owner Denny Hamlin before making his second career start at the iconic 2.5-mile racetrack and the first with 23XI Racing.

"It seemed pretty solid," Reddick said, speaking of his #45 Toyota Camry XSE (via racedayct.com). "When you come to a place like this, that’s always something you hope for. Obviously, it seemed like Denny (Hamlin) had a really good test and we were able to get some good data from him."

However, according to Tyler Reddick, performing well on tracks like the IMS requires a lot of things to go right. It is all about finding the answers to several questions.

"Tracks like this, it’s always a question mark to some degree, you know? How close is your sim preparation going to be? But it seemed like everyone did a pretty good job. Pretty happy with how the car drives," Reddick added.

The qualifying event is scheduled for Saturday, July 20. The main event will kick off on Sunday, July 21 at 2:30 pm ET. The 160-lap race will be shown live on NBC Sports and Peacock with radio updates on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.