Tyler Reddick won an Xfinity championship, then left for RCR and is finally realizing his potent

To understand why Tyler Reddick is such a revelation — a breakout performer with three wins through 15 races this year in the NASCAR Xfinity Series — one must dispatch with the narratives attached to him and comprehend the well-timed confluence of improvement between the driver and his new team.

He parted with JR Motorsports following a championship-winning Xfinity season in 2018 to join Richard Childress Racing this year. On the surface, this was a considerable step down — Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s operation churned out three championships since RCR’s last Xfinity title in 2014. Reddick’s decision seems prescient, as RCR consolidated from three full-time teams to one and has produced the fastest car in the series this season.

Advertisement

In reality, Reddick’s camp — led by his grandfather, a record company executive in the country music industry — wanted Reddick expedited to the Cup Series, something JR Motorsports could not accommodate as an Xfinity-only operation.

And contrary to popular belief, RCR’s competitive leap didn’t begin this season. The behind-the-scenes turnaround within its Cup Series and Xfinity Series competition departments was well underway when its first dividends arrived last fall: Daniel Hemric’s RCR entry ranked as the fastest over the course of the Xfinity Series playoffs. With all its focus on one Xfinity team in 2019, a speedy output was the most likely result for the organization.

Reddick is the beneficiary of the company’s re-organization, and deserves some credit for expertly changing to a lane with less congestion following Hemric’s promotion to the Cup Series. But there’s more to his improvement; after two years of chronic underachieving, he’s now exceeding what’s expected of him.

He entered the Xfinity Series in 2017 with Chip Ganassi Racing. True to form for the car — six different drivers won in Ganassi’s now-defunct No. 42 entry between 2016 and 2018 — Reddick captured a victory at Kentucky Speedway but secured only three other top-five finishes behind the wheel of a machine that ranked as the second fastest in the series on weekends when Kyle Larson was its driver. His half-season yielded a Production in Equal Equipment Rating (PEER) of 0.028, ranked 45th among the 60 drivers who made at least six starts.

The biggest influence on his unproductive effort is visible in the disparity between how often he ran in the top 15 and how many times he finished in the same whereabouts — he finished 15th or better 23 percent less often than his percentage of completed laps in that part of the running order, signifying four top-15 finishes left on the table.

Advertisement

The 2018 season marked his first full Xfinity Series season, as he took the reins of JR Motorsports’ No. 9 entry William Byron departed as champion. He won twice — one of those races being the title-deciding finale at Homestead — but the season as a whole felt lackluster given the height of his accomplishment. His PEER rose to 0.864, ranked 20th among 52 drivers, and his top-15 disparity shrunk to 10.7 percent — still the third-biggest chasm among full-time drivers.

Coming into 2019, his top-end ability was never in doubt — he proved he was a gamer last fall at Homestead — but whether he could string together a consistent, good season was unclear. A regression analysis before the season indicated a 0.348 PEER, the 24th-best projection and worse than expected for an Xfinity driver aged 23 years.

This season is serving as the long-awaited positive regression to the mean for his results-getting pattern, almost in an embellished manner — he’s finished inside the top 15 in all 15 starts this season. Counter to what he did last year, his top-15 finish rate of 100 percent tops his 91.5 percent of completed laps in the same running whereabouts, one of the three highest rates in the series, trailing Cole Custer and Michael Annett, both at 96.3 percent.

This isn’t close to what we saw from him in years past:

A product of scoring results commensurate with his effort is an increase in his PEER. His 4.833 rating tops all drivers with at least six starts, including Christopher Bell (3.800) and Custer (3.733), the only other series regulars to match Reddick’s win total and drivers who, coming into 2019, were regarded as more viable Cup Series prospects.

If his team owner’s recent comments on the matter are any indication, it appears Reddick did right by his gambit to position himself for a Cup ride.

Advertisement

“He has talent,” said Richard Childress, the organization’s owner and namesake, after Reddick’s victory last May in Charlotte. “He will be a superstar in the Cup division and we want him to do it for RCR.”

If his peripheral statistics hold, he’d be the most complete prospect to come through RCR’s Xfinity program since Kevin Harvick nearly 20 years ago. The most jarring change to Reddick’s profile is his ability to score and defend track position — he’s gone from a below-par passer and restarter to the most efficient mover in the series in the span of one year. The difference is visible in his radar charts from 2018 (top) and the 2019 season to date (bottom):

The difference is night and day; on the racetrack, his passing has yielded 54 positions more than it did during the same stretch of races in 2018. It’s as if Reddick is a completely different driver than the one who won the championship last year. While most drivers adhere to the same developmental high marks — the first coming around age 24 — this all feels fairly remarkable.

It could also mean he’s soon to return to earth after overshooting his projection and past production so wildly. Normal regression to the mean seems a given in this scenario but then again, so did the inverse in 2017 and 2018. Regardless, the peripheral passing and restarting numbers lend enough reason for optimism. No, he likely won’t finish inside the top 15 each race, but he might come very close while maintaining stellar track position measures.

It’s not clear now how his newfound penchant for passing will translate to the Cup Series level, where the cars’ handling is radically different than what he’s currently used, but it’s enough to make a case for him being, at the very least, one of the 38 best stock car drivers in the world. This transformation has taught us he’s worthy of receiving a ride on Sunday afternoons.

Though his decision was less a Machiavellian design than what the narrative around him suggested, Reddick’s move to RCR is justified as a perception-altering shift that’s enhanced his position within the sport moving forward.

(Top photo of Tyler Reddick: Brian Lawdermilk / Getty Images)

ncG1vNJzZmismJqutbTLnquim16YvK57kGlscG1iaHxzfJByZmlvX2V%2BcMDYpZyrZaKasaW1wqRksKeeYq6vedefoKehpK56pLTApqeip56otaq8jK2fnqZdobKnwIyfpqtlopi%2Fbq3NnWSiq12btq%2Bty6WwZqqVlrmqxsinnmagmah6sbvTnqWtoZGhfA%3D%3D