“We’ll take the second place”: Tyler Reddick focuses on the positives after finishing runner up to Kyle Larson at Darlington

Tyler Reddick lost the 2023 Cook Out Southern 500 to Kyle Larson by a narrow margin of just 0.447 seconds on Sunday at Darlington Raceway.

It was a perfect day for the #45 23XI Racing Toyota driver as he led 90 laps, the second most of any driver and was in a position to win the 500-mile race. This win could have helped him advance to Round of 12 but he lost the control of the race on pit road with less than 60 laps left.

Kyle Larson took the lead from Reddick off pit road on the final pit stops and the #45 Toyota driver spent the rest of the race chasing former Cup champion and could not catch him even with the help of three restarts in the final 50 of 367 laps.

Despite losing a race to Larson, Reddick is satisfied with runner-up finish and focusing on the positives as he moved to the third place in the playoff standings with two races left in the Round of 16.

Speaking to NBC Sports on what went wrong on the final pit stop after the race, Tyler Reddick said:

“Maybe just a little bit longer run. It had just gotten short enough to where you didn’t have to save a whole lot (on tires) I don’t think. Kyle and I were pretty close the majority of the day, honestly, and he just got ahead of us there on pit road. But all in all, this is the day that we needed to have”, as quoted by motorsports.com.

Reddick continued:

“It just didn’t make sense in my head, so we’ll take the second place. Hopefully, one day in the future, we come back and have another shot at the Southern 500.”

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“Really just thankful for the hard work from my pit crew” – Tyler Reddick

The 27-year-old California-native was the top-finishing Toyota driver with a P2 finish at Darlington as he competed against three playoff drivers for the lead throughout the evening – Denny Hamlin, Christopher Bell, and Kyle Larson.

Thanking his #45 23XI Racing crew team, Tyler Reddick said:

“Really just thankful for the hard work from my pit crew, from the team, everyone at the shop. Days like this with a car like this, we haven’t been able to get a second place finish out of it, so really glad we were able to do that. It was a really good points day on top of that, as well”, as quoted by motorsports.com.

Watch Tyler Reddick next in action at Kansas Speedway for the second race of Round of 16 on September 10.