Next Gen car isn’t comfy for Reddick

Tyler Reddick is enjoying his status among NASCAR’s fastest drivers through the season’s first three races, adapting quickly to the sport’s Next Gen car that has provided solid racing and a new degree of difficulty for many drivers.

The only issue is Reddick can’t seem to get comfortable in his Chevrolet’s seat, leading to numbness in his legs.

That’s a big problem for a driver in a 3,200-pound hunk of steel that can move over 150 mph.

“I just think I was in a really good place in that old car for such a long time and didn’t realize how easy or how bad you could end up missing it, the comfort side of things,” Reddick said.

If he can find a way to fix his leg issues, he might just find a spot in victory lane for the first time in his NASCAR career. The 26-year-old, who is in his third season with Richard Childress Racing, has led the most laps (90) of any driver so far this season.

So far, those laps up front haven't led to great finishes in 2022. He was 35th at Daytona and 24th at Fontana after he was doomed by a flat tire before a seventhplace showing at Las Vegas last week. Now the racing has moved across the desert to the tri-oval in Phoenix, which will host the NASCAR championship again in November. Sunday’s race is the Rouff Mortgage 500.

Reddick said it’s been hard to diagnose his leg problems because it’s difficult to re-create racing conditions in the garage.

“It’s pretty challenging to understand sitting still, you know with no load, no bumps, no heat, whatever it might be, to really feel if there is going to be a problem,” he said.

He’s not the only one who has had numbness issues in the new car:

Alex Bowman talked about having some of the same problems at Daytona. Team Penske's Austin Cindric — who won at Daytona — said his “right butt cheek was on fire” after a few laps at Las Vegas last week.

Kyle Larson — the defending NASCAR champ who already has won once this season at Fontana — said last week that he expects Reddick to have an “amazing season” after the driver led the pack during offseason testing. That could start Sunday in Phoenix.

ELSEWHERE

Fast test by Verstappen: World champion Max Verstappen dazzled under the floodlights for Red Bull on Saturday, easily topping the charts on the last day of Formula One preseason testing in Bahrain.

Verstappen, who led F1 with 10 poles last year, beat his own leading time near the end, going so fast he even did a 360 spin.

Running with the

RB18’s upgraded sidepods and floor that clearly worked, Verstappen clocked a leading time of 1 minute, 31.720 seconds, the fastest across the three days of testing in Bahrain.

He was around .5 seconds ahead of Mick Schumacher, who moved up when driving alone as the American-owned Haas team was granted two extra hours after everyone finished. That was agreed in order to make up time lost due to the late arrival of freight shipments.