NASCAR heat brings 3-peat for Tyler Reddick with honest ovals on way

Go ahead and ask.

“Whaddaya say now, smart guy?”

This: Three in a row is better than two in a row, and right now, you’d rather be Tyler Reddick and the No. 45 team than any other driver and team in the Cup Series. Maybe.

It’s hard to argue with the three-versus-two math. Impossible, actually. Same with some other math — through just three races, Reddick is 70 points up on second place (teammate Bubba Wallace, by the way).

For the third straight week, Michael Jordan celebrated a win with his 23XI driver Tyler Reddick.

So yeah, the driver’s seat of the No. 45 is where you’d like to be planted today. But I’ll repeat what was said here last week: We’re gonna know a whole lot more six weeks from now, because we’re about to dive into a big dish of NASCAR’s meat-and-taters — ovals ranging from a half-mile to a mile and a half, beginning with Phoenix Raceway this coming weekend.

Further explanation below, along with talk of strange bedfellows and drivers in heat (totally unrelated topics, I swear) and how a Zamboni driver rolled to a 36th-place finish in Austin.

Or something like that.

First Gear

It’s amazing, really, to discuss NASCAR history and drivers who have pieced together win streaks, and not see the name Richard Petty.

It’s not that the King didn’t cobble together some consecutive wins. In fact, back in NASCAR’s formative years (compared to the self-proclaimed “modern era” that began in 1972), Petty once won 10 straight races in the summer and early fall of 1967, the year he won 27 of his 48 starts.

That 1967 streak included the Maryland 300 on the half-mile Beltsville Speedway, where King Richard finished two laps ahead of Bobby Allison and Jim Paschal — thought it’d be nice to illustrate how the pre-modern era often looked.

But not even Richard Petty — or David Pearson, Jeff Gordon or any combination of Jimmie and Junior Johnson — ever opened a Cup Series season with three straight wins.

And you can’t overestimate how big a deal it is for NASCAR to have this happen under the gaze of Reddick’s team co-owner, Michael Jordan, who knows a thing or two about three-peats. But Jordan’s pair of three-peats were NBA championships with his Chicago Bulls in the 1990s.

When it comes to a championship, Reddick is a long, long way from peating, much less repeating or three-peating. Which takes us to the next stop in the gear box.

Second Gear

Last week, you were warned about discounting a potential third straight win for Reddick, due to his road-course abilities and excellent track record at COTA.

The COTA win was the least surprising of the three, even with Shane van Gisbergen’s recent road dominance. Winning at Daytona and Atlanta was more of a surprise, simply because you first have to survive to the final lap at those places. Winning a pair of crapshoots before showing off your road-racing skills is good stuff, but it shouldn’t send you to the championship trophy engraver just yet.

The season’s third “plate race” is scheduled for Talladega in late April. Before then, starting this coming weekend, check out this six-pack of venues: Phoenix, Las Vegas, Darlington, Martinsville, Bristol and Kansas.

No intentional right-hand turns, no restricted horsepower to bunch up the field. Just a bunch of ovals of various shapes and lengths and banking. Of Reddick’s 11 career wins, only one of them has come at one of the upcoming tracks (Kansas in 2023).

That’s not to say he won’t continue his winning ways. But let’s assume he probably won’t continue his winning ways. Certainly not at his current pace.

Look for that Hendrick bunch to start making noise. Most of them, anyway.

Third Gear

On paper, it’s like Joe Buck sending his broadcast spotter down to the field to replace an injured linebacker. But only on paper.

In reality, it’s more like David Ayres hopping off the Zamboni to help the Carolina Hurricanes beat the Toronto Maple Leafs six years ago.

Huh? Let’s recap …

Alex Bowman began feeling horrible Sunday behind the wheel of the No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevy. Central Texas temps in the mid-80s might’ve played a role, especially coming on the heels of months of winter weather. Poor AJ Allmendinger’s “cool” suit wasn’t so cool, and he had to be stretchered away for an IV afterward.

Bowman didn’t make it that far. When he couldn’t continue, he was pulled out with 22 laps remaining. His emergency replacement was Myatt Snider, whose previous Sunday duty had him serving as eyes and ears for Fox Sports’ pit reporter Jamie Little.

But if you’ve paid more than just occasional attention, Myatt Snider probably rings a bell. That’s because he has a combined 148 NASCAR starts in O’Reilly and Trucks. He has a win, too, five years ago at Homestead in the O’Reilly Series. Sunday was his first Cup action, and who knows, maybe his last since there doesn’t seem to be much on the agenda.

Unlike the aforementioned David Ayres, a 42-year-old Canadian who moonlighted as a Zamboni driver, Snider spends his down time flying a seaplane. True story.

You might recall him taking flight at the end of a Daytona Xfinity race in 2022.

Ayres had some hockey background and kept sharp by serving as a practice goalie for a minor-league team in Toronto. Snider has his own lengthy racing background, but also has connections to help with his Fox gig — you probably know his dad, Marty Snider, a longtime NBC pit reporter in NASCAR.

Fourth Gear

For the second straight week, NASCAR and IndyCar are rubbing elbows in the paddock. NASCAR’s Truck Series made its debut this past weekend on the streets of St. Petersburg, where IndyCar continued its season-opening tradition.

This week, it’s NASCAR’s O’Reilly Series sharing the Phoenix oval with IndyCar on Saturday, while the Cup Series races there Sunday.

The two competing series paired for a few years at Indianapolis (2020-23). This new attempt at the all-important “synergy” might be the first of more to come in ensuing years, or maybe not.

— Email Ken Willis at ken.willis@news-jrnl.com

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: NASCAR heater for Tyler Reddick, Michael Jordan, Alex Bowman at COTA

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