Column By: REID SPENCER / NASCAR – PLYMOUTH, WI – Tyler Reddick can’t be considered a natural on road courses, but hard work has paid off for the driver of the No. 8 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet.
In 11 road course starts in the NASCAR Cup Series, Reddick has posted five top-10 finishes. Two of those were top fives, including a runner-up result last year at the Charlotte Roval and a fifth-place run at Circuit of the Americas in March.
“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.”
The fun factor aside, Road America is a track that can compound mistakes made in a single corner.
“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.”