Big Machine Racing Team are now Xfinity Series winners, courtesy of Tyler Reddick. (Photo: Sean Folsom | The Podium Finish)
FORT WORTH, TEXAS – Big Machine Racing Team started the 2022 NASCAR Xfinity Series campaign with Jade Buford as their primary driver. Although he had solid qualifying efforts, the race results weren’t there.
Therefore, the Scott Borchetta-led team made changes by putting a rotation of drivers in the No. 48 Chevrolet. Notably, two-time Xfinity Series Champion, Tyler Reddick.
After coming up short of winning at Darlington, Texas Motor Speedway would be the track things were dialed in. Reddick was able to pull away from another Series champion, William Byron, to score the win in the SRS Distribution 250.
The victory marked Reddick’s 10th career win and the first since winning the 2019 championship at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
“We were really fast but made mistakes at Darlington. To fight back was huge but made another mistake at the end. To bounce back was really important to run good (at Texas),” said Reddick. “The team is putting in all the work to be competitive. They wanted me to come in and try to help what they needed to do to make the cars better and get to victory lane.
“We knew we were going to make the cars better, but it’s pretty cool to go to work after Darlington. Here we are in victory lane.”
Reddick scored his 10th career Xfinity Series win. (Photo: Luis Torres | The Podium Finish)
Saturday didn’t start off with the single-car effort taking center stage. That honor went to JR Motorsports who had dominated the first two stages with Noah Gragson and Josh Berry winning them respectively.
However, things would slowly fall apart as Gragson and Berry were collected in a multi-car crash on the backstretch. Later, Gragson would have his day further dashed when his backend became a compact car. The polesitter wound up 36th out of the 38-car field.
Later on, Justin Allgaier had a flat tire coming into Turn 1. Fortunately, he kept it off the wall and rallied back to finish fourth. While JRM didn’t go to victory lane, they still savaged some solid results, including a third-place finish by Sam Mayer.
This tallied another strong result for the sophomore racer who has now finished in the top five in six out of the last seven races. Among those six finishes, two of them have been top-three outings.
“We have a lot of momentum going into the next couple of weeks,” Mayer told The Podium Finish. “I’m super proud of this team. They’ve been on it the last couple of weeks, especially today. We overhauled our mindset from yesterday to today and it really benefited us. Obviously, with a good strong car and to balance and keeping up with the race track and everything like that was good. Super proud of those guys.”
After 12 races, Mayer currently sits seventh in the regular-season standings. (Photo: Luis Torres | The Podium Finish)
Byron was also in the mix during the final stage and lost to Reddick by 1.825 seconds. Saturday marked Byron’s first Xfinity Series start since winning the 2017 championship, hoping to help JRM expand its momentum.
In terms of how his No. 88 Chevrolet Camaro handled, he noted it was similar to the older cars and understood what might’ve kept him from catching Reddick.
“I definitely know there were a couple of things that I noticed in the car. It’s similar to the old car,” said Byron. “Just locked a little bit of turn taking off and that’s where we struggled. It would come to a little bit but not enough to really keep up.”
The race turned into a game of survival as several drivers would see their days dashed. Among those was JJ Yeley, who was running in the top-15 for much of the 167-lap race in a Ford Mustang that was formerly owned by Team Penske.
That run ended on Lap 139 when he was collected in a massive Turn 4 crash that also took out Anthony Alfredo, Jesse Iwuji, Ryan Ellis, and Alex Labbe. All drivers were checked and released from the care center.
The Xfinity Series will head back home to North Carolina as the Alsco Uniforms 300 commences Saturday, May 28 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. Ty Gibbs is the defending race winner.
Jubilation for Reddick as he hoisted the trophy. (Photo: Dylan Nadwodny | The Podium Finish)
Top 10 Results: Reddick, Byron, Mayer, Allgaier, A. Hill, R. Truex, Berry, Herbst, Allmendinger, and Cassill
