TALLADEGA, Ala. — A week later, there’s still no bad blood between Tyler Reddick and Chase Briscoe.
Last Sunday, at Bristol Motor Speedway, Briscoe tried to pass Reddick for the lead on the last lap but failed and ended up spinning both cars. As soon as Briscoe parked on pit road, he went to find and apologize to Reddick.
“Just because I didn’t lose my mind, right, that doesn’t mean I’m OK with what happened,” Reddick said at Talladega Superspeedway. “That still sucked.”
RELATED: What happened between Briscoe, Reddick at Bristol
Others reacted strongly. NASCAR fans, fellow drivers and casual viewers might have thought a fight was justified. Even crew members of Reddick’s team were disappointed Briscoe didn’t pay for his actions.
“Certainly there’s people that I work with that have been doing this a lot longer than I have on the Cup level that haven’t won,” Reddick said. “And just everyone’s path to how they got here and what their story is, we’re a little bit different, so that, I guess I can understand why they’re more outwardly frustrated than I was.”
The victory would have also been a first in the Cup Series for Reddick. Instead, he finished second. That adds to the lack-of-reaction confusion.
Meanwhile, Briscoe — who ultimately came in 22nd but already won this season at Phoenix Raceway — hasn’t received nearly as much negative feedback as Reddick this past week.
“For him, it was a kind of a totally different situation, right?” Briscoe said. “I think people expected him to be mad, there was no reason for me to be mad. … I was glad to see that he was smiling when I got there. And I was glad that how the racing deal worked out, it ended up being with a dirt guy just because I felt like we both understood where the move was coming from and the intent behind it.”
RELATED: Watch final lap where Briscoe spins Reddick
Reddick said as much, too. He believed Briscoe when he said the spin wasn’t intentional. The shared dirt background simmered any anger. There’s no desire for revenge.
Briscoe’s Stewart-Haas Racing teammate, Kevin Harvick, can’t relate, but he can understand.
“That’s the way those guys are wired, man,” Harvick said. “You watch all those dirt races, that’s how you do it. I just watched another one last night from Port City, (Oklahoma). So, you know, the midget race ended in a tip-over with the second-place car sliding the leader. Apparently that’s just how it seems to always go. Or it goes that way a lot of times. And as you saw afterwards, those guys are apparently pretty used to it.”
Had it been Bristol’s normal concrete surface, even Reddick admits the post-race story would have been completely different. But it wasn’t. It was dirt.
And it was Easter. Families were present. His son was there.
“I feel like my reaction to it was the right one,” Reddick said. “I still stand by that.”