Today the Cup Series practiced for a full 50 minutes. Unfortunately, Tyler Reddick says the new short-track package isn’t cutting it in Phoenix. This could be bad news for NASCAR.
In the offseason, NASCAR claimed that they were making a “big swing” on the short track setup for the Cup Series. It is no secret that passing in dirty air is borderline impossible with the Next Gen car, especially on short tracks.
After multiple tests last year, a new tire, and adjusting the rear diffuser and spoiler. Of course, no change to horsepower. Today after going P3 in practice at Phoenix, Tyler Reddick was not impressed.
In fact, he said it might actually be worse, much worse.
“I’m glad we practiced coming to pit road because that was not good,” Reddick said of a spin and near wreck to FOX’s Josh Sims. “Yeah, car-wise I’ve hit the wall a few times. I don’t know how we went third on the board but we’ve got some work to do I think. Not exactly what we wanted for our Mobil 1 Camry. We don’t have a lot of turnaround time for tech and yeah, knocked the tail off of it pretty good.
“I don’t know if that’s some of our handling issues, but yeah, just every time I feel like we made a positive change, we’d get in traffic and it’d just be gone again. Pretty interesting to say the least, I think this package was supposed to help traffic but it feels exponentially worse. Very interesting trying to feel out your car, feel out what’s happening there out in traffic as well. I’m sure we got a lot to talk about and figure out in a short amount of time.”
It does not bode well for NASCAR or the race on Sunday if this is what Tyler Reddick took away from practice.
Tyler Reddick coming off season-best finish at Las Vegas
This weekend could be major for Tyler Reddick. He has adjustments to make, but overall, the No. 45 23XI Racing team has a good base to work off of. P3 in single lap speed and top-10 in 10, 15, and 20 lap speed as well.
After his runner-up finish at Las Vegas, Reddick is happy to build off of that momentum.
“Well, I mean, we’ll be here quite a while I’d say working on this thing. Hopefully, we have enough time to get this thing through tech,” Reddick continued with Sims. “It was nice to have a good solid, a solid-ish day I guess, right? It wasn’t a clean day but it was nice to have speed and at least get some stage points out of it and everything like that.
“As you can see this is at least the clean side of the car at one moment I wasn’t sure if it was going to stay that way. So, yeah, we’re gone practicing so I can’t damage it anymore.”
So, Tyler Reddick isn’t impressed with the new package. Will we see any difference in the race Sunday? NASCAR has insisted time and time again that increasing power is not the solution or even an option, really. However, up to now, nothing has worked and in fact, it seems to be getting worse.
The Shriners Children’s 500 goes green at 3:30 PM EST this Sunday, March 10. Joey Logano was fastest in practice and qualifying will set the starting lineup on Saturday.
More must-reads: