San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
In Vegas, RCR envisions a season of success
LAS VEGAS — Tyler Reddick led 51 laps in NASCAR’s season-opening exhibition, and when a mechanical problem knocked him out of the race, he climbed into the stands to high-five fans.
Austin Dillon, meanwhile, went on to finish third and salvage the day for Richard Childress Racing. But the race didn’t mean anything, so nothing to see here, right?
Not so fast, said reigning NASCAR champion Kyle Larson, who before the Daytona 500 listed Reddick as a driver to watch this season.
“I think Tyler Reddick is going to have an amazing season,” said Larson, who praised Reddick for leading the pack during offseason testing.
“I feel when I watch him, I am watching myself just because we are both really aggressive and he seems to be even a little more aggressive and keeps things in control better than I could,” Larson added. “He’s the guy that I look at this year that I feel like is going to have the breakout season and win a lot of races.”
Dillon and Reddick didn’t show much in the Daytona 500, but when NASCAR shifted last week to Auto Club Speedway in California, RCR was again very good. Reddick led a race-high 90 laps last Sunday — a career high for Reddick — and won the first two stages of the race before he was doomed by a flat tire; Dillon was runner-up to winner Larson.
Now as NASCAR rolls into its third race of the season Sunday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, the RCR cars really do seem much improved. So much so that Richard Childress expects to be making multiple trips to victory lane this season.
“I know we can win,” Childress said this week. “We are going to win.”
Reddick and Dillon will have to make up some ground to accomplish that feat after finishing seventh and 10th, respectively, in Saturday qualifying.
Christopher Bell won the first pole of his career and will lead the field to green.
Bell turned a lap at 182.673 mph Saturday to put his Toyota from Joe Gibbs Racing on the pole. Wind gusts of nearly 30 mph had drivers on edge headed into qualifying, but it wasn’t a factor as drivers avoided the spins that plagued them last week in California.
Larson qualified second in a Chevrolet for Hendrick Motorsports. Larson is the defending Las Vegas winner and also looking to put together a two-race winning streak following his victory last Sunday at Fontana.
“Hopefully we get on a little streak,” said Larson, who has eight top-10 finishes in 11 career starts at Las Vegas. FanDuel lists him as the 9-2 favorite Sunday.
Daytona 500 winner Austin Cindric qualified third in a Ford for Team Penske. Cindric is the first rookie in NASCAR history to lead the Cup points standings for more than one race.
Chase Briscoe continued his strong start to the season by qualifying fourth in a Ford for Stewart-Haas Racing. Briscoe opened the season with a third-place finish at Daytona and led 20 laps last week in California. He’s currently fifth in the standings.
Chase Elliott was fifth for Hendrick Motorsports, and Penske driver Joey Logano was sixth.
Childress is a NASCAR Hall of Famer who has fielded Cup Series cars for 49 years, tallying six championships with the late Dale Earnhardt and 109 victories. But the last decade has been lean with only four wins over the last eight seasons.
Dillon, his grandson, scored the last RCR victory at Texas in 2020, and RCR has not been a credible championship contender for years. But the organization has high hopes for NASCAR’s new “Next Gen” race car and the early commitment to that effort from Chevrolet and ECR Engines.
“We definitely tried to be the guys to embrace this new car the earliest in the process. I think some of the teams probably didn’t embrace it as much as we did,” Dillon said. “This new car is going to level the playing field. That’s what it was kind of built for. Everyone has pretty much the same stuff, it’s just how you assemble it and the set-up choices you make going into the race.
“There’s a lot being learned at a high rate right now, so we’re trying to take in all that data the best we can — as our company can — and make the best decisions going into the race so that we can adjust and make our car a little bit better than the other guys.”