The polls are open for the National Motorsports Press Association’s 2025 Most Popular Driver Award. Fans can vote up to five times per day per unique email address for their favorite driver in the NASCAR Cup Series, the NASCAR Xfinity Series and the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series.
Simply visit the Most Popular Driver landing page and click on the series logo for the series you want to vote for, select your favorite driver and click the submit button to cast your vote. Fan Rewards members will earn 25 points on their first vote from the Rewards dashboard.
The polls are open from noon ET on Monday, Oct. 6, until noon ET on Monday, Nov. 3. We’ll update you with the top 10 vote-getters in each series on Oct. 15 and again with the top five vote-getters in each series on Oct. 22. The winners will be revealed on Nov. 4 at the NASCAR Awards banquet in Scottsdale, Arizona, after Championship Weekend. The NMPA will also send out a press release that announces the winners.
Be sure to come back to NASCAR.com for the top-10 and top-five updates and continue voting to help your favorite drivers in each series cross the finish line.
Chase Elliott has won the Most Popular Driver Award in the Cup Series for the past seven seasons, while Justin Allgaier and Rajah Caruth took home the honors in the Xfinity and the Craftsman Truck series in 2024, respectively.
The 16-driver NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs field that opened the 10-race postseason is now cut in half. Eight drivers survived the year’s second elimination Sunday at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval, while four more lost their eligibility for the Bill France Cup.
The playoffs will roll on with next Sunday’s 400-miler at Las Vegas Motor Speedway (5:30 p.m. ET, USA, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, HBO Max), but first, a breakdown of an eventful Bank of America Roval 400 and the playoff perspective that became clearer after an eventful Round of 12 finale.
WINNER
Shane van Gisbergen, No. 88 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet. The top-billed favorite among playoff and non-playoff drivers alike ran his road-course win streak to five straight, tying Denny Hamlin for the most Cup Series wins this season. Van Gisbergen led 57 of the 109 laps and his 15.160-second margin of victory ranked second only to his own 16 1/2-second advantage at the end of the inaugural Mexico City event in June. The shoo-in Sunoco Rookie of the Year also reached six career wins in just 46 starts, becoming the fastest to reach that mark since A.J. Foyt hit that plateau in 1972.
Kyle Larson, No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet. The former Cup Series champ’s winless spell has now reached 20 races, but he’s showed signs of momentum in the Round of 12. Larson logged top-10 finishes in all three of the round’s races, highlighted by a runner-up effort Sunday at Charlotte. Those results — plus a gathering of points at each stage Sunday — helped him advance before the final Roval stage.
Christopher Bell, No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota. Bell started the playoffs with a 29th-place thud at Darlington, but it’s been mostly positives in the races since then. Sunday marked his second consecutive third-place finish, stretching his run of top-10 results to five straight. Those consistent conversions helped him clear the elimination bar by a whopping 60 points.
WHO’S NOT?
Ross Chastain, No. 1 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet. The lone remaining playoff driver for Trackhouse fought gamely in the final stretch, but his last gasp to avoid elimination came up four points short. Those efforts were at least partly undone by a pair of miscues on pit road — a Lap 27 overshoot of pit exit that cost him 14 positions, and a Lap 88 speeding penalty when he left his pit stall in the wrong gear. He tried to hold off a charging Joey Logano in the points hunt, driving on older tires for the home stretch, but his advantage slipped away. His head-of-steam run into the final chicane nudged Denny Hamlin out of the groove, but also sent his own No. 1 Chevy spinning. He backed across the finish line in 21st place.
Austin Cindric, No. 2 Team Penske Ford. A collection of mishaps in the race’s first half doomed the 27-year-old driver’s already slim hopes for reaching the Round of 8. Cindric overshot the backstretch chicane on Lap 9, looped his No. 2 Ford a lap later after contact from Justin Haley’s No. 7 Chevy, then sustained bigger damage after Carson Hocevar locked up his No. 77 Chevrolet and barreled into him in the front chicane on Lap 33. It all added up to multiple laps behind the wall, a 36th-place finish in the 37-car field and the loss of postseason eligibility.
BUBBLE WATCH
RANK
DRIVER
+/-
1
Denny Hamlin
+8
2
Ryan Blaney
+6
3
Kyle Larson
+4
4
William Byron
+4
CUTLINE
5
Christopher Bell
-4
6
Chase Elliott
-14
7
Chase Briscoe
-14
8
Joey Logano
-24
NASCAR INSIGHTS
Not surprisingly, the two drivers atop the scoring pylon were also aces in the NASCAR Insights metrics. Race winner Shane van Gisbergen was easily No. 1 in speed and restarts, and runner-up Kyle Larson was among the top five in four of the five analytics categories (defense, speed, restarts and pit crew). The best pit crew for the day was the No. 47 Hyak Motorsports Chevy team for Ricky Stenhouse Jr., but second on the list was Joey Logano’s No. 22 Team Penske group, which made the most of their service stops, helping keep their driver’s title defense alive.
QUOTABLE
“I trust Paul Wolfe.” — JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 Team Penske Ford, on his veteran crew chief’s pit-stop call with 11 laps remaining, which gave him a tire edge for the final run to the checkers.
NEXT RACE
The Cup Series Playoffs move into their next phase Sunday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, where a treacherous three-race Round of 8 will begin. The South Point 400 (5:30 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App) will mark the last race of the season on a 1.5-mile track. From there, the Cup Series field will experience a pair of extremes — its largest oval at 2.66-mile Talladega Superspeedway on Oct. 19, and its smallest at the 0.526-mile Martinsville Speedway on Oct. 26. Those three races will determine the four drivers who will race for a championship Nov. 2 at Phoenix Raceway, and Las Vegas could help set the tone.
CONCORD, N.C. — Strategy for Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs race at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval was largely determined — and altered — after Saturday’s practice session.
A new-to-the-track Goodyear tire produced lap times that were roughly two to three seconds slower than the 2024 edition of the Bank of America Roval 400. More critically, teams saw a lap-time fall-off of roughly four seconds over the course of the tire life, a dramatic slowdown that forced teams to deviate from previously laid plans.
Teams were no strangers to this particular tire compound, as it’s the same tire teams used at the five other road courses on the 2025 schedule. That’s, in part, what made the Roval wear so drastic.
“Yeah, it was a bit of a shock,” race winner Shane van Gisbergen said. “I think our outright pace was two seconds slower than last year, and then you would fall off another four seconds off what we did last year. That was a big surprise. I don’t think anyone expected that. Yeah, as a driver, you want to be flat-out the whole time and pushing hard, but also, those races create mixed strategies and different pit cycles and stuff.
“Probably more interesting as a fan and seeing people come and go, and a lot more passing. I’m all for whatever makes better racing. It’s frustrating having to drive and save the tire the whole time, but if it makes good racing, I’m all for that.”
Adam Stevens, crew chief of Christopher Bell’s No. 20 Toyota, echoed his surprise post-race despite his team’s third-place finish.
“I think it caught, certainly us off guard,” Stevens told NASCAR.com. “I don’t know if I could say it’s true for everyone, but yeah, it was a different race for sure.”
Teams scrambled to make whatever adjustments they could to their cars for the final race of the Round of 12, but the rules only permit so many drastic changes. Much like the extreme tire wear that caught teams by surprise at Bristol Motor Speedway, Stevens said teams could make their tires last if they were permitted more flexibility to change their car setups. But much of the car’s settings are locked in during the week.
“Most of the setup decisions are made before you leave for the track,” Stevens said. “And the car’s impounded after inspection, and the list of things you can change is pretty small. So if you feel like you’re way off, there’s just not a lot you can do to remedy it. And certainly, if we had access to every setup parameter, we would have changed an abundance of things that we couldn’t change.
“It’s the same for all of us. We just had to make the most of it with what we had, and I think (we were) probably about as good as we were going to be. But you know, if we were running this race again tomorrow, we’d come back with something pretty different.”
David Jensen | Getty Images
Billy Scott, crew chief of the No. 45 Toyota for driver Tyler Reddick, knew his team needed to chase the win since they entered the elimination race 29 points beneath the cutline. Starting from pole afforded the team early track position, but as other teams split the stage by pitting midway through the opening 25-lap stint, Scott kept the No. 45 on track to save a set of tires for later. Ultimately, the strategy didn’t work out and Reddick was eliminated from the postseason, along with his 23XI Racing teammate Bubba Wallace, Trackhouse Racing’s Ross Chastain and Team Penske’s Austin Cindric.
“The strategy going in was focusing on winning, so we weren’t too worried about getting stage points or keeping the track position there,” Scott told NASCAR.com. “In hindsight, though, I think we probably would have fared better to have followed the group in that stage, but I think also we could have been led to a point we felt necessary to pit again in Stage 2 like we did and run out of tires. We just didn’t have a good long run car.
“We came here trying to be a little more aggressive on some setup stuff, trying to find a little bit more speed that we needed to keep up with the 88 (van Gisbergen) and I think it backfired, in a sense, with having tires that wouldn’t last 10 to 12 laps. We were certainly on the short side of that.”
Multiple strategies were utilized throughout the pits, with some teams choosing to pit twice during the final stage and some opting for three stops. Who chose what was dependent on car strength and track position. But in the end, the speed of SVG overcame any sort of tire drama, propelling him to his fifth straight road-course win — no matter the tires.
“We could run second or third, and that was about it,” Stevens said. “We just didn’t have anything for the 88, and we knew coming in, he was going to be the car to beat. If we’d had a little bit cleaner day, certainly second was on the table, but it was going to take circumstance to move up one more spot.”
NASCAR officials have disqualified the No. 35 23XI Racing Toyota, driven by Riley Herbst, after the car failed to make minimum weight after Sunday’s Cup Series race at the Charlotte Roval.
The rookie driver had originally crossed the line in 30th, one lap down at the 17-turn, 2.28-mile road course. It’s the second Roval race in a row where officials have disqualified a car for failing to make weight, as Alex Bowman’s playoff run came to a halt with a similar issue last year.
Herbst had multiple hiccups on the afternoon, flattening his own tire on Lap 58 after a retaliation attempt on Ty Dillon. Moments later, he went spinning off the bumper of Kyle Busch coming through the Turn 17 chicane.
The No. 35 car, as well as the No. 41 Ford piloted by Cole Custer, will return to the NASCAR R&D Center in Concord, North Carolina, for further inspection. There were no other issues.
Shane van Gisbergen won Sunday’s race, leading 57 laps and cruising to a 15.160-second triumph over defending winner Kyle Larson.
CONCORD, N.C. — The drama of the postseason doesn’t get more tense than Sunday’s Cup Series Playoffs Round of 12 elimination race at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval.
Joey Logano crossed the finish line 20th on the final lap, when he was in a dead heat with Ross Chastain at the cutline for the final transfer spot into the Round of 8. As the three-time series champion completed the frontstretch chicane, two cars were spun backward just before the checkered flag — Denny Hamlin’s and Chastain’s.
Logano beat Chastain by 0.167 seconds as the No. 1 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet drove backward across the line.
When the smoke settled, Logano grasped the final semifinal spot by four points.
“If you’re one of those people that say playoff points don’t matter, stage wins don’t matter, regular-season races don’t matter — go watch that,” Logano said.
For 109 grueling laps around the 17-turn road course/oval hybrid, Logano and Chastain were nearly inseparable at the cutline.
One lap, Logano would be ahead. Then the next, Chastain would slide into the eighth spot. And with heavy tire falloff heightening the importance of strategy and pit-road execution, Sunday shaped up as a three-hour game of chess between the No. 1 and No. 22 teams around the 2.28-mile circuit.
The No. 22 crew slipped up first with a slow change on the right-front tire in the final stage as Chastain drove by their pit stall.
But the race flipped back in Logano’s favor after a costly speeding penalty by Chastain on the final stop with 20 to go, which the 2022 Championship 4 finalist ultimately said was the reason he won’t race for the Bill France Cup for the remainder of the season.
“I single-handedly took a car out of the Round of 8 and a chance to go to the round of four,” Chastain lamented. “In two months, we’ve elevated ourselves from, I say, an 18th-place car to an eighth-place car. Today, we were good enough to run top five, and I took us out of that. It’s all on me.”
As the laps wound down, No. 22 crew chief Paul Wolfe made the gutsy decision to pit Logano with 10 to go in hopes of being able to either force Chastain and the No. 1 team to cover or have the tire advantage to make up the spots to elevate above Chastain on the cutline.
Chastain ran the final 20 laps without pitting, and Logano was forced to try to make up as ground as possible. But with Logano not having the outright speed, he needed Chastain to lose spots.
AJ Allmendinger, Tyler Reddick got by. Then, Bubba Wallace and Chase Briscoe. Chastain lost the spots, and the pressure was on to hold serve, but he was unsuccessful. Ford drivers Josh Berry and Todd Gilliland slipped past the No. 1 Chevy with Hamlin serving as the final point to get Logano through.
Hamlin passed Chastain on the final lap in Turn 7, and Chastain attempted a last-ditch effort in the frontstretch chicane that ultimately sent both the No. 1 and No. 11 spinning before the checkered flag — cementing another gutsy call for Wolfe as a success.
“Unfortunately, we just didn’t have the speed, and it just makes it hard to call the strategy at times,” Wolfe told NASCAR.com. “They’re running numbers based off of an average lap-time curve, right? And at one point, I’m just, like, ‘guy, we got to figure this off of our lap times, what we’re capable of doing because we have all the programs that are running and telling you, is it faster to stop two or three times?’ Finally there at the end, once Ross got to us there before that stop, I was like, ‘listen, just what’s our numbers telling us for us?’ And it told us we were faster to stop again. I said, ‘well, it doesn’t matter what the 1 does, we’re going to stick to our strategy,’ and obviously it paid off, and did what we expected.”
Hamlin, who advanced to the Round of 8 by 33 points, was collateral damage and finished 23rd after straightening out his No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota. The 44-year-old veteran said he was unaware of what the points scenario was between Chastain and Logano on the final lap.
“Honestly, I was just running. I saw the 1 was fading. I didn’t see the 22. I assumed the 22 was way ahead of us. So honestly, I was driving blind. I had no idea the points situation,” Hamlin said. “I was just trying not to wreck the 1. He was fading, but I didn’t want to get into him or anything like that. I didn’t want any parts of it. No one told me anything, so I just had absolutely no idea.”
David Jensen | Getty Images
“They were innocent bystanders in it,” Chastain said of spinning Hamlin. “And whether he knew or not, I don’t know. I would hate to be in that position. The past speaks for itself, and I’m more aware of my surroundings. I am sorry to them, sorry to Denny, I’m sorry to JGR and his whole team. They were definitely innocent bystanders.”
Chastain’s crew chief Phil Surgen called the final lap ‘suspenseful.’ He could only helplessly watch the No. 1 car try to survive and advance on track.
However, he said he’s overall proud of the fight from his team with a handful of low points throughout the 2025 season.
“We still don’t feel good about where our speed’s at and how competitive we are,” Surgen told NASCAR.com. “But through the lull in the summer that we had with some wrecks and some lackluster performance, everybody dug in deep and started the playoffs. We started qualifying better. We started finishing better, putting races together. The pit crew was rolling, and just all that energy that came together in the playoffs was really great. Hopefully, we can build on that more for the end of the year and for next year.”
Another year, another bid into the Round of 8 as Logano makes the semifinal round for the 10th time in the playoff era.
The trust between Logano and Wolfe only continues to grow, and they’ll begin the Round of 8 at the same track that set them up for a championship last season – Las Vegas Motor Speedway next Sunday (5:30 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App).
“In my opinion, there’s no one better than Paul at calling a race,” Logano said. “He’s really, really good at it, so I trust that he makes the right calls.
“What you did in the past never guarantees success in the future. But to be able to still be around — that’s all you’ve got to do in these playoffs. Just stay alive. It’s been a grind so far and we’ll grind it out to the very end.”
The NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs Round of 8 field is cemented after non-playoff driver Shane van Gisbergen picked up his fifth consecutive road-course victory Sunday at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval.
Joey Logano clinched the final spot in the semifinal round, using fresh tires after a pit stop with 11 laps to go to sneak past Ross Chastain by four points. Tied going into the final corners, Chastain entered the frontstretch chicane at high speed, knocking Denny Hamlin around in a last-ditch attempt to advance. Chastain also spun, reversing to the start/finish line but not in time to advance as Logano picked up multiple spots in the melee.
Chastain had two issues on pit road Sunday afternoon, overshooting pit exit after Stage 1 and speeding during Lap 87 service.
William Byron, Chase Briscoe and Denny Hamlin all advanced based on finishing position at the Roval. Byron placed 11th, Briscoe 14th and Hamlin 23rd.
Both Kyle Larson and Christopher Bell clinched Round of 8 spots earlier in Sunday’s 109-lap thriller, Larson advancing after placing second in Stage 1 and Bell advancing after finishing seventh in Stage 2. The drivers scored a combined 14 points and 11 points in the opening two frames, respectively.
A pair of former Cup Series champions already clinched their spots in the semifinal round before Roval weekend. Team Penske’s Ryan Blaney picked up his third win of the season two weeks ago at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, and Chase Elliott of Hendrick Motorsports scored a thrilling victory last weekend at Kansas Speedway.
Chastain, Bubba Wallace and Tyler Reddick of 23XI Racing and Team Penske’s Austin Cindric were eliminated.
CONCORD, N.C. — As expected, road-course maven Shane van Gisbergen won Sunday’s Bank of America Roval 400, but that was only a small part of the story at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Road Course.
Long after van Gisbergen took the checkered flag to record his fifth straight road-course victory of the NASCAR Cup Series season, Ross Chastain made a banzai run in the frontstretch chicane and wiped out Denny Hamlin’s Toyota in a desperate attempt to secure the final spot in the playoffs’ Round of 8.
Spinning after the contact with Hamlin’s car, Chastain threw his car into reverse and sped backwards across the finish line, but the effort proved futile. The final Round of 8 spot instead went to defending series champion Joey Logano, who finished 20th and advanced by four points over the Trackhouse Racing driver.
A pair of mistakes on pit road cost Chastain dearly. At the first stage break, he ran wide into the 90-degree corner at the exit from pit road, missed the turn and came to a stop, losing 15 positions to restart 30th.
After recovering from that error and putting himself in position to advance, Chastain sped on pit road on Lap 87 of 109, ran long to the finish and lost too many spots on the final two laps to hold off Logano.
“(Trackhouse owner) Justin (Marks) hired me to carry this 1 car and to drive it and to be a leader, and I just completely unraveled our day,” a crestfallen Chastain said. “We definitely had the speed on the last lap, yeah, and missed turn 7, and I slid the rear tires and let the 11 (Hamlin) by.
“Yeah, not acceptable. I just completely … you know, just completely unacceptable.”
Logano was delighted to escape the race at the 2.28-mile circuit with the opportunity for a fourth NASCAR Cup Series title intact.
“Such a close finish there,” he said. “Yeah, knew it was within a point there (before the last-corner collision). I knew we were going to be tied there at the end, and Ross was going to do whatever he had to do to make it happen. Geesh, just wasn’t quite fast enough today with our car.
“It’s the drama of the playoffs. If you want drama, the playoffs bring it every time.”
Eliminated along with Chastain were pole winner Tyler Reddick (10th), Bubba Wallace (15th) and Austin Cindric, who needed a win to advance and instead finished last (37th) after a litany of issues throughout the race.
Ryan Blaney and Chase Elliott already had advanced to the Round of 8 with respective Round of 12 victories at New Hampshire Motor Speedway and Kansas Speedway. Race runner-up Kyle Larson, third-place Christopher Bell, William Byron, Chase Briscoe, Hamlin and Logano joined them after Sunday’s elimination race.
Both Larson and Bell made van Gisbergen’s task harder than usual. The New Zealander, however, was so good at managing his fragile tires that he finished the final 59-lap stage on two pit stops compared with three for his closest pursuers.
The result was a whopping 15.160-second margin of victory over Larson for the driver of the No. 88 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet. The victory was his fifth of the season and sixth overall, and his five straight road course wins are one short of Jeff Gordon’s series record, set from 1997 through 2000.
Both Bell and Larson were aggressive in their attempts to unseat NASCAR’s current road course king. On Lap 63, Larson muscled his way past van Gisbergen, with Bell following into second.
After a cycle of green-flag pit stops, the Kiwi passed Bell for second. Eight laps later, he dived to the inside of Larson’s No. 5 Chevrolet in the Turn 7 hairpin and regained the lead.
After another round of pit stops, SVG and Larson swapped the lead with significant contact between their cars before van Gisbergen passed Larson through the backstretch chicane on Lap 98 and held it the rest of the way.
“Yeah, just started getting hot and sliding around, but what an awesome race,” van Gisbergen said. “Kyle and Christopher driving really good and got a little rough, but, man, the battle was awesome.
“With the Chevy, I lost it a little bit at the start of Stage 3, and whatever they did for the rest of the race, unbelievable. Really enjoyed that, and that was a long time waiting, hoping the yellow wasn’t going to come out (as he ran late on older tires).”
Briscoe made the Round of 8 by 19 points with a 14th-place finish despite feeling ill during the race. At one point, he asked for a bag of ice, which he stuffed inside his driver’s suit.
“It was definitely an odd day,” Briscoe said. “We definitely just weren’t that great. I don’t know. They gave me a pill in the beginning, and I felt a lot better. I was just so dizzy … I’ve been fighting something all week, and I sound terrible, I’m sure.”
Non-playoff drivers Chris Buescher, Michael McDowell, Ryan Preece and Daniel Suárez finished fourth through seventh, respectively. Elliott was eighth, followed by AJ Allmendinger and Reddick.
The Round of 8 begins next Sunday with the South Point 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway (5:30 p.m. ET on USA Network, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App).
Note: The No. 35 Toyota driven by Riley Herbst was disqualified in post-race inspection for failing post-race weights. All other cars cleared inspection, validating van Gisbergen’s victory. The Nos. 35 and 41 are returning to the NASCAR R&D Center in Concord, North Carolina, for teardown inspection.
Carson Hocevar made contact with Austin Cindric entering the frontstretch chicane at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval, all but ending Cindric’s chances at advancing in the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs.
On Lap 32, Hocevar entered Turn 16 with too much speed, spinning through the corner and contacting Cindric. Both drivers suffered damage and came down pit road for repairs. Cindric, the Team Penske driver, fell 22 laps down, ultimately ending his playoff hopes as he finished 36th.
It was the second incident that Hocevar had partial responsibility for, contacting Kyle Busch in Turn 1 of Lap 1 as the Richard Childress Racing driver hit the wall and fell several laps down.
“Just a shame that we got hit so perfectly, that KO’d all of my rear suspension,” Cindric said after the race. “You don’t want three races to define your season. It’s amazing how much everything ebbs and flows throughout the year. You feel like for a month, you can’t do anything wrong, and for three weeks that matter the most, you feel like you can’t do anything right. It’s just how the cookie crumbles and you gotta be on it, and we’ll learn.”
Before the Stage 2 mishap, Cindric had already suffered a pair of issues in the backstretch chicane. He blew the corner at Lap 9, serving his stop-and-go penalty on the racing surface before falling to 23rd position. Moments later, Cindric went for a spin in Turn 3 off the nose of Justin Haley, forcing him to pit road with scuffed tires.
“It’s such a long race here, like, in those moments, I didn’t feel like I was out of it,” Cindric said, reflecting back to before his tangle with Hocevar. “I just wanted to not put us in a situation where we’re completely out of it, just knowing the strategies were going to get super crazy with the super long run, having the [tire] falloff we had [Saturday], knowing how big the windows were.”
But in a sense, those moments were like a microcosm of Cindric’s entire Round of 12, finishing no better than 17th (New Hampshire) in three races. Though the contact from the Spire Motorsports driver essentially ended his championship hopes, the fourth-year driver from Mooresville, North Carolina, shouldered most of the blame.
“I mean, this round was definitely tough for us. I mean, never really feel like we even had the speed to get stage points in any of the races,” he said. “But I also feel like I take a lot of that with having a qualifying lap each week that probably would have put me in the top 10 and slipping up and not being able to execute. I feel like I displayed some of my car control more than I displayed speed this round, so I feel like that falls on me.”
Although eliminated, Cindric still has more to look forward to in the season’s final four races. After Las Vegas Motor Speedway next Sunday (5:30 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App), it’s s trip to Talladega Superspeedway, a track that he won at in the spring.
And while the stats might not show it, earning just five top 10s so far, Cindric believes that it’s been his best Cup Series season to date.
“There’s a lot of races this year that we had speed and a lot of capability and execution to try and contend for race wins,” Cindric said, reflecting on the first 32 races. “There’s been so many races that we’ve run exceptionally well. You think about Indy and Iowa, even Richmond, places that feel like we had opportunities taken away from us in some respects, and that’s going to happen, but you want to consistently run well.
“I would agree that this has definitely been my best season to date – it doesn’t feel that way today, but I think it’s definitely something to build on.”
Want to start the road to the Round of 8? No need to wait until Saturday, Oct. 11, for cars to get on-track at Las Vegas Motor Speedway — we’re kicking off the road to Vegas on Sunday night with a hauler live stream that will shepherd viewers across the country and into Sin City.
Following Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs Round of 12 finale at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval, you can ride along in an official NASCAR hauler as it makes the 2,200-mile trip to Las Vegas.
Watch the live dash-cam feed of the open highway, big miles and a behind-the-scenes journey that keeps the NASCAR season rolling, presented by Mobil Delvac.
Visit our YouTube page for more, or simply watch the embedded video below.
CONCORD, N.C. — For a brief time Saturday, Tyler Reddick was able to hop in the No. 45 Toyota and hone in on leading his 23XI Racing group closer to the Round of 8 in the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs.
Those efforts proved fruitful as he earned pole position for Sunday’s Bank of America Roval 400 at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval (3 p.m. ET, USA Network, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App).
Outside the car, though, he and wife Alexa Reddick have been pinning all focus on their son Rookie, who at 4 months old remains in the cardiovascular intensive care unit at Levine Children’s Hospital in Charlotte, North Carolina, amid recent health concerns.
Alexa Reddick shared on Sept. 28 that doctors discovered Rookie was displaying signs of heart failure. Her latest update, shared to Instagram on Saturday night, provided additional news, posted some six hours after Tyler Reddick won the pole.
“Rookie has a tumor that’s ‘choking’ the renal vein & renal artery,” her post read, “telling the heart, ‘hey I’m not getting enough blood… pump harder,’ causing the enlarged heart. He will need the entire kidney removed as it is not believed to be functioning any longer. He will undergo open surgery to remove his right kidney. We’re just not sure when. Waiting is OK right now to give his heart a break while he’s on (blood pressure) medication. They expect his heart to fully recover because it was just an innocent bystander. We have answers but a journey ahead to bring our little Cookie home.”
The circumstances have weighed heavily on the family, putting full priority into ensuring Rookie’s recovery and well-being while Tyler also pursues a spot in the Round of 8. But anything related to Reddick’s day job has taken an obvious backseat to his son’s health crisis.
The Reddicks received more answers following last week’s race at Kansas Speedway.
“In some ways, I was fortunate when I came home (from Kansas),” Reddick said Saturday at Charlotte. “Basically, as I was rolling into the hospital, they were able to somewhat understand fully — to a much clearer picture — what exactly it was. They obviously knew what the issue was, so they found the cause. So I can’t imagine what that was like for my wife at the hospital. She’s there looking at our son, and they’re still trying to diagnose and understand what the issue is.
“Certainly something crazy you obviously never expect, but it’s a lot to go through for my wife, for my son, my other son as well, Beau. So it’s trying to manage it all.”
Indeed, Alexa Reddick has been there for every moment as she and Rookie navigate their circumstances together. That hasn’t gone unnoticed by her husband.
“Just really proud of her, honestly, throughout this whole process,” Tyler Reddick said. “She’s been — I hate to even use the word, but locked in, honestly, on everything that’s going on, whether that’s what they found today, what the plan is going forward, everything. She’s paying, obviously, very close attention and just giving very good feedback to the doctors on past history and everything. Yeah, difficult situation for both of us being but she’s been a great one.”
Reddick enters Sunday’s race 29 points beneath the cutline to advance into the next round of the playoffs, a virtual must-win situation that was aided by a strong qualifying effort Saturday that has him leading the field to the green flag for the Round of 12 finale. But when he’s not behind the wheel, Reddick is looking at what’s most important.
“I think you just try to be as present as you can,” he said, “whether that’s on the phone like I was in Kansas or in person like I was this week. Just be there as much as I can. Me and Alexa feel, right now, good enough for me to be here today.”
