July 2, 2022 | By Lee Spencer

Tyler Reddick to continue his Cup career at Richard Childress Racing

PLYMOUTH, Wis.—Richard Childress Racing has picked up its option on Tyler Reddick.

The 26-year-old racer, who pilots the No. 8 Chevrolet, is currently 13th in the standings in his third full season on the NASCAR Cup tour.

Reddick won his first of consecutive Xfinity Series titles at JR Motorsports before joining RCR in 2019.

“Just fulfilling the agreement we had in front of me,” Reddick said. “It was a three-year contract with a one-year option. Nothing has changed. It was RCR’s option. We’re good to go. It’s a done deal.”

With four top-five results in the first 17 races of 2022, Reddick has already surpassed his previous career-best of three top fives in one season. He had a dominating run going at the Bristol dirt race before a slide-job-gone-wrong by Chase Briscoe coming out of the final corner of the last lap opened the door for Kyle Busch to win.

Still, Reddick has improved dramatically over the last three years. He has taken a shine to the new car.

“This is a performance-based sport, obviously,” Reddick said. “You have to run good on the racetrack. Thankfully, we’ve been running where we need to be on Sundays and going in the right direction. I’m glad that they’re happy. I’m happy. We have the rest of the year ahead of us, but it’s good to know I have next year, too.”

Reddick is performing double duty this weekend at Road America. He’s piloting the No. 48 for Big Machine Racing in the Henry 180 Xfinity Series race on Saturday. Prior to the NXS race, Reddick qualified fourth for Sunday’s Kwik Trip 250.

Last year, he finished eighth when the Cup Series debuted at the 4.048-mile circuit where precision pays off.

“If you miss one you mess up the whole lap,” Reddick said. “The mentality of trying to make it up is how you get into trouble. If you miss Turn 1 and try to make it up in Turn 3, you make it even worse and then you might even crash in Turn 5 or Canada Corner if you use that oval mentality of trying to make it up in the next corner.

“A place like Road America is a narrow, unforgiving race track, so it doesn’t work there.”

In 11 Cup starts on road courses, Reddick has earned two top-fives and five top-10 results. Last year’s second on the Roval was his best road course finish. This season, Reddick finished fifth at Circuit of the Americas.

“I’ve grown very fond of road course racing which was something I didn’t do a lot growing up,” Reddick said. “The time that I’ve put into getting better at it, I found rather quickly that it has become one of my favorite types of race tracks that we have on the schedule.

“It’s going to be physical. It’s going to be mentally tough as well. We’re going through the corners with faster speed and the dirty air seems to be a bit more troublesome because of that.

We’ll see how it goes, but the best cars will find their way up to the front. They’ll qualify up front. We’ll just have to see how things shake out.”