NASCAR insiders point to Ty Gibbs, Brad Keselowski moments that changed race at Michigan

Ty Gibbs and Brad Keselowski made big moves that helped Tyler Reddick win the FireKeepers Casino 400 at Michigan International Speedway on Monday. On The Teardown podcast, Jeff Gluck and Jordan Bianchi of The Athletic detailed what Gibbs and Keselowski did that impacted the Michigan Cup Series race.

“The race was ultimately decided in my view by Ty Gibbs deciding to absolutely shove Tyler Reddick out as far as he could and then try to win from there. Obviously, he’s trying to be a good teammate, but he also wants to win himself, he needs a win,” Gluck said. “That was a huge factor in what happened.”

Gluck also pointed out that Keselowski lined up behind William Byron during the overtime restart. Byron thought that Keselowski lined up behind him because he assumed that Bryon was going to run out of fuel. But Keselowski told reporters that he had “engine hiccups on restarts.”

Bianchi also weighed in on the moves by Gibbs and Keselowski. “Restarts at Michigan are so much about who’s behind you and how you can time it right and get that push,” Bianchi said. “When you’ve got a Toyota teammate behind you like Reddick did, it’s going to be a huge advantage.

“Certainly, the Keselowski thing is interesting as well because Keselowski just fell back. It was like a rock it kind of stacked everybody up behind him too including [Ryan] Blaney and [Chase] Elliott. It was almost like Byron didn’t really have a fighting chance there.”

More on the moves made by Ty Gibbs and Brad Keselowski

“The important thing to note there too that I heard is as Tyler Reddick was deciding which lane to take, there was a concern of ‘Okay, Byron is the leader, and if we line up on the top because we think the top is good but we have to line up behind him, is the 24 going to run out of fuel.’ They did not want to be behind the 24 because they didn’t want to be stuck in a situation kind of like what we saw a few weeks ago in Indianapolis where all of sudden we’re screwed because the guy in front of us just ran out of fuel.”

Byron finished second, Gibbs finished third and Keselowski finished fifth. Reddick won his second Cup Series race of the year, and the win helped him be the new leader in the points standings with two races remaining in the regular season.