Clear skies. Low 51F. Winds light and variable..
Clear skies. Low 51F. Winds light and variable.
Tyler Reddick stands on his Camaro and celebrates in Winner’s Circle after winning the Auto Trader EchoPark Automotive 500 on Sunday at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth.
Chase Elliott blew a right side tire, causing him to crash and burn his No. 9 Napa Chevrolet Camaro on the frontstretch while leading the pack Sunday at Texas Motor Speedway.
Pit crew members fly to service Ryan Blaney's Ford Mustang (12) during the Auto Trader EchoPark Automotive 500 on Sunday at Texas Motor Speedway.
Tyler Reddick does a burnout after winning the 18th annual Auto Trader EchoPark Automotive 500 on Sunday at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth.
Car owner Richard Childers congratulates Tyler Reddick (8) in the Winner's Circle after he won Sunday's Auto Trader EchoPark Automotive 500 at Texas Motor Speedway in Denton County.
Tyler Reddick stands on his Camaro and celebrates in Winner’s Circle after winning the Auto Trader EchoPark Automotive 500 on Sunday at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth.
FORT WORTH — In a day race that unintentionally became a night race, Tyler Reddick speeding to victory over Joey Logano was the easy part.
The Autotrader EchoPark Automotive 500 on Sunday saw a record number of cautions for Texas Motor Speedway, a weather delay and a significant number of teams experiencing tire failures.
Reddick and Logano were on the front row for the final restart with 24 laps remaining. Reddick, who had not won before this season, pulled away after one lap and was never challenged en route to his third win of the year.
Reddick said he wasn’t dwelling on the fact that he was eliminated from the Cup Series playoff last week.
“I’m just going to enjoy the win that we have today — tonight — and get ready for Talladega,” Reddick said. “I’d love to be racing for a championship, I really would, but we can’t. We can do everything we can to go out and win these races.”
Car owner Richard Childers congratulates Tyler Reddick (8) in the Winner's Circle after he won Sunday's Auto Trader EchoPark Automotive 500 at Texas Motor Speedway in Denton County.
Logano said he had a tire vibration and couldn’t keep up with Reddick’s No. 8 Chevrolet.
“Square tires, when they should be round,” Logano said. “They shake — can’t see where you’re going, makes the car loose.
“But they held air, so I’m happy about that.”
Several teams had right-rear tires go flat, resulting in cars spinning into the outside wall, mostly in the higher-banked Turns 3 and 4 of the 1 1/2-mile oval.
“We’re gaining as much information as we can from the teams, trying to understand where they are with regard to their settings — air pressures, camber, suspension,” said Greg Stucker, Goodyear’s director of racing. “Without a doubt, air pressure is playing into it. We know where a lot of the guys are, some more aggressive than others.”
Logano finished second by 1.2 seconds, followed by Justin Haley, Ryan Blaney and Chase Briscoe.
Haley scored his second third-place finish of the season in a Kaulig Racing Chevy that has just one other top-10 result.
“As the track transitioned to nighttime, we really came alive, and obviously track position was everything,” Haley said. “[Crew chief] Trent Owens made a good call for two tires.
“To be able to kind of grow this organization and know we can come out here and compete is pretty cool.”
Finishing sixth through 10th were Erik Jones, William Byron, pole winner Brad Keselowski, Kyle Larson and Denny Hamlin.
Playoff drivers in the top 10 were Logano, Blaney, Briscoe, Byron, Larson and Hamlin.
The 12-driver second round of the playoff has races remaining at Talladega and the Charlotte road course before the field is trimmed to eight contenders. Playoff drivers remain winless in the four playoff races so far.
Logano leads the standings and is 30 points above the elimination line. Ross Chastain (13th on Sunday) is 12 points behind Logano, and Byron is third, 13 behind the leader.
Drivers below the cut line are Briscoe, Austin Cindric, Christopher Bell and Alex Bowman. Bell and Bowman are more than 25 points below the line.
Bowman (29th place) crashed on the north end of the track in the closing laps of Stage 1. Larson then outdueled Hamlin, with Hamlin getting into the back of Larson’s Chevrolet on the last lap as the pair battled for the playoff bonus point that came with the stage win.
Bell (34th place) and Chase Elliott (32nd) retired with crashes in Stage 2. Elliott entered the day leading the standings and was leading the race when a right-rear tire failure sent the No. 9 Chevy into the Turn 4 wall.
Chase Elliott blew a right side tire, causing him to crash and burn his No. 9 Napa Chevrolet Camaro on the frontstretch while leading the pack Sunday at Texas Motor Speedway.
“Something came apart. I could hear it flapping in the right-rear fender well,” Elliott said. “If it wasn’t down, it was certainly coming apart.”
Elliott is now eighth in the standings, four points above Briscoe.
The treacherous conditions weren’t reserved for playoff drivers. Cody Ware crashed hard in Turn 4, and his damaged Ford hurtled down pit road with limited ability to slow down. He impacted the concrete pit wall, missing a sharp corner by a few feet.
Prosper’s Chris Buescher, last week’s winner at Bristol, spun through the frontstretch grass on Lap 197, then lost a tire and hit the wall while running third in Stage 3. He finished 30th.
Kevin Harvick had a tire failure while leading six laps after the ensuing restart, then it was Martin Truex Jr. crashing from the lead 18 circuits later.
During that caution, Byron spun Hamlin into the grass in an apparent act of retaliation from an earlier situation where Byron was forced into the wall.
Ricky Stenhouse Jr. spun into the wall from third place with 35 laps remaining, and Cindric spun himself around Stenhouse’s car — avoiding any collision.
Kyle Busch and Truex crashed early in the race, but Truex continued with minimal damage.
Pit crew members fly to service Ryan Blaney's Ford Mustang (12) during the Auto Trader EchoPark Automotive 500 on Sunday at Texas Motor Speedway.
Blaney won Stage 2, and before the race could be restarted, NASCAR flew a red flag for rain and lightning. The cars were covered up on pit road, and the delay lasted 56 minutes.
NBC reported before the rain that it was the hottest weather for a race at TMS and the track temperature was 140 degrees. The National Weather Service recorded an air temperature of 99 degrees at Denton Enterprise Airport just before 4 p.m. and a little over an hour after the race started.
The 16 cautions eclipsed the previous TMS record of 13 cautions set in the 2014 Autotrader EchoPark 500.
Tyler Reddick does a burnout after winning the 18th annual Auto Trader EchoPark Automotive 500 on Sunday at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth.
Reddick, who led three times for a race-high 70 laps, also survived an issue with safety foam coming unglued and interfering with his steering wheel.
“Next thing I know I’m driving into Turn 1 and the door foam fell over,” Reddick said. “The door foam was in my hands and in my wheel, so I couldn’t really turn the steering wheel and I went flying up the racetrack.
“I grabbed it, and I tried to throw it over to the right side of the car. It got stuck right in front of my face around the front straightaway, which was not good. … Under that lightning delay, we were able to get it back out from the right side of the car and fix it — just tape everywhere.”
MATT CRIDER may be reached at mattcrider99@gmail.com and via Twitter at @countryMCdenton.
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